Premiere: Send Medicine, ‘Tall Flowers’

Daiana Feuer on November 24th, 2015

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From Toronto, Canada, to a Canyonside magic mushroom garden near you, behold the psychedelic panoply of Send Medicine. Upon moving to Los Angeles from up yonder, singer-guitarist Julian Hacquebard joined forces with drummer Salvatore Romano, percussionists Ryan Glennen and Lauren Grimaldi, bassist Aaron Stern, and guitarist Connor Hill to perform and record an album, “Scary Aquarius Daughter,” which will be self-released Jan. 6. What began as a folky ditty to pass time eventually transformed into “Tall Flowers,” a standout track inspired by Hacquebard’s love of bands like Pentangle, Fairport Convention and Vashti Bunyan from England’s late-1960s/early-’70s Canterbury scene. As he fiddled with the song at Hill’s home studio, they added layered backwards guitar, tribal drumming and haunting background vocals by Send Medicine’s first bass player Lauren Barth.

Hacquebard says the song represents “an impressionist idea around many elements of ‘California Life’ in general, both geographically and symbolically, The Archetypal Garden of Eden mythology mixed with a woman in a red dress, buyer beware, the rose with prickly thorns, or possibly a hint at plants that hold special psychotropic elements …” All of which is captured in his self-directed video for the tune, which follows a woman down a trippy garden path. Hacquebard considers “Tall Flowers” a unique moment on the album, sitting between songs more rooted in rock, garage and surf. He adds, “It’s important for a ‘psychedelic record’ to blast off, but then also wade around in the post-peaking moments of reflection, where you return to a climate you once know, but is now slightly different maybe slightly ‘off.'” Please remove shoes before boarding the spacecraft.

||| Watch: “Tall Flowers”