Flower of the Cosmos Liner Notes:

SIDE A: Can’t Do This in Your Head (3:29) ● Like Hate (4:32) ● Faks (4:38) ● Golden Door (4:56) ● Fill Up Glass (4:35)

SIDE B: Bubble Scum (3:55) ● Raising Kids in the End Times (3:45) ● Dorito Dreams (3:31) ● Crude Wave (4:04) ● Romance (5:02)

Recorded and mixed at Studio G Brooklyn by Tony Maimone and Francisco Botero.

Produced by Loyal Giraffes fans (Vincent Bova ● Gunnar Stultz ● Matthew Miller ● John Ellwood ● Bryce Bernards ● Brian Johnson ● Ryan Maresco ● mlmcal ● Joanna Erdos ● Michael McNamara ● gabe.henkes ● bobby ● Steven Spencer ● Sean Payne ● Scott Yoss ● Jason Gardner ● Matt Lemme ● Tim Kent) ● The Giraffes ● Tony Maimone ● Francisco Botero.

Mastered by Matt Labozza

Guitar & Organ: Damien Paris
Drums & Percussion: Andrew Totolos
Bass: Josh Taggart
Bass on “Romance”: Hannah Moorhead
Vocals & Guitar: Aaron C Lazar
Noise: Jason Ziolo ● Scott Damell ● Michael Weber
Guitar Solo on “Golden Door” by: Mrs. Smith

Notes on writing the record

by Aaron Lazar (lyrics / vocals)

This record started as a collection of sketches and ideas in early 2016. We were intending to write a concept record following a format we’ve never touched before: love songs. We thought if we forced ourselves to do something uncomfortable new ground would be broken and we would be able to explore new modalities while creating “love songs” that would have our own idiosyncratic spin on the format. As the year developed it became very clear to us that a group of songs about love and romance just wasn’t going to be honest. Lyrically I reimagined nearly every track on the record and found new things to say about topics that frighten and dismay me. This, in turn, recontextualized a lot of the music and after a near total rewrite, we were finally ready to hit the studio in 2018.

Musically we followed a stratagem of placing the busier more arpeggiated parts in the verse and big open chords in the chorus. This allows the vocal parts to be more melodic or more staccato helping the verses to build tension that we release in the choruses. The songs got bigger and more anthemic as lyrically they grew sadder and darker. This is an inversion of the typical format for riff centric songwriting where the flourishes are the reward in the choruses / bridge / solos. Reversing this pattern took our sound into a new place and offered a lot of new territory to explore. Recording was done at the grammy award winning Studio G in Brooklyn under the guidance of Tony Maimone and Francisco Botero.

As a writer I found myself wanting people to know precisely what I said for the first time. This is a continuation of the theme that we have been developing since Prime Motivator and we are reaching a point where more of our songs have a political subtext than not. It's a strange thing to bring overt political perspectives to metal and heavy music which traditionally has been more concerned with the occult and or fantasy. For me, the real world is far more brutal and terrifying than any lovecraftian myth could ever be. With that in mind, we hit on the title of Flower of the Cosmos as a somewhat bitter acknowledgment that the modern world in all of its absurdity, vanity, sham, exploitation, and cruelty stands as the culmination of a 4 billion year uninterrupted chain of life on earth. We are the fruit of all that has come to pass before us, the pinnacle of creation, the acme of reality. We did it everyone. Go us.

Notes on individual tracks

by Aaron Lazar (lyrics / vocals):

Can’t Do This in Your Head.
An appeal for collectivism over individuality. The left needs to get better at coming together to support ideas and platforms that can make the change we need to see as a matter of human survival. Joining-in and letting-go is a huge part of The Giraffes live sets and is the only thing we have ever tried to achieve as performers. We know a thing or two about setting conditions to "gel" and are doing our part to help the collective emerge.
Like Hate
Our nation is like most empires, we tell ourselves it was raised from the dust by hard work and sacrifice and that we deserve the fruits of our ancestral labor. The truth however is that this fruit is poisoned by our denial of history and our inability to face the exploitation, slavery and genocide this nation required to rise in the first place. In our double bind where our pretensions of nobility exist in the space that racism, bloodshed and death has carved out for them ensures those poisons will never be removed without first confronting our bloody history plainly and openly.
Faks
The trick to selling an idea is to believe it yourself. How can you believe an idea when the world itself feels uncanny and wrong? How can you confront something that you can feel but not speak? The answer is don't think about it, it’ll all be over soon enough.
Golden Door
A love song to the actual statue of liberty. I pass it twice a day on my commute to the city. We will watch her slowly slide beneath the rising waves as we also see her promise to the world become a mockery of themselves. Another woman we have asked to do the impossible and then hamstrung after the fact.
Fill Up Glass
Inspired by the Kim Stanley Robinson book New York 2140. This is a love song to a flooded future new york where the rising seas have created a space for the artistic bohemian underclass to exist one more.
Bubble Scum
A desert rock dirge about crisis capitalism, told from the point of view of a crass and creepy materialist who’s seen it all and done a little more. A person who’s skepticism in human thought extends into everything. After all: “what we feel doesnt change the things we do”.
Raising Kids in the End Times
If Elon Musk started making Jor-El pods they’d probably sell out overnight. This is an upbeat song in a funny time signature about making-do and lowering expectations for the hellscape we are bequeathing for future generations.
Dorito Dreams
You can’t rhyme the word orange and you can't pretend you are disconnected from the culture that has given us this royal tangerine dream. A song of futility, rage and denial and one about coming to terms with the intellectual poverty of our age.
Crude Wave
There are currently 175 oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico and 8237 offshore drilling leases registered with the federal government. I expect that number to go up.
Romance
I initially wrote this song solo and it was brought in to the Giraffes as a sort of thesis for the love song theme of this record. The idea of the song started when i was living in washington heights next door to an evangelical church that had a completely mirrored interior and extremely loud, lively and passionate services that would thump through my apartment walls and echo down the street. I was simultaneously dismissive of the ideology but jealous of the fun because it looked to be one of the best live shows in town.

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