Greetings from the Sunshine State. Indie rock darlings flipturn paint a lush soundscape of Florida monsoons, jewel-toned dragonflies, and crystal clear river waters with the rich lyrics of their latest release, Burnout Days. 

“Juno” kicks off the album with an energetic description of the band’s tour van, Peggy. This joy ride of a track is a sun-soaked glimpse into the band’s supposedly glamorous life on tour. The ironic lyric “there’s nothing dangerous when life is a day trip” foreshadows the album’s deconstruction of the mirage of uncomplicated success. 

Frontman Dillon Basse’s characteristically dreamy voice takes on a wailing grit in “Right?” Of all the tracks on the album, “Right?” is perhaps the most striking. Madeline Jarman’s thrumming bassline burrows itself into the listener’s chest. Basse exemplifies the driving theme of Burnout Days with the lyrics, “All you’re asking for is just a little more time / to prove some existence / Some existential war through all the blood and gore / because people admire persistence.” Given flipturn’s extensive tour schedule over the past few years, it makes perfect sense that the band members have experienced exhaustive ambition. 

“Swim Between Trees” is a charismatic love song that might have made the soundtrack of the movie adaptation to Delia Owens’s Where the Crawdads Sing, had it been released a few years earlier. An imaginative listener might find themselves in the marshland as Basse sings, “Bungeed the jungle bummer / Swam between the trees of summer / My love's a dragonfly who paints her eyes in every color.” Clearly, flipturn has a gift for clever turns of phrase.

This is an album born partially of shame, self-criticism, and failed experimentations with drugs and romance—but don’t expect a sudden transition into aggressive hard rock with shrieking vocals or shredding guitars. Burnout Days is a rhythmic, bittersweet chronicle of the highs and lows of the band’s 20s, particularly their push to “make it” in music. It’s refreshingly human in a time when even art is being delegated to algorithms. Despite the record’s polished sound and the generous use of synthesizers, flipturn’s work is far from overproduced.

-Lauren Textor