Florry Makes Indie Rock That Actually Rocks

The Philadelphia band Florry first came across my radar in 2023, upon the release of their third album, The Holey Bible. Led by singer-songwriter Francie Medosch, who started the project when she was a teenager, Florry is part of the same country-rock solar system that includes Wednesday and MJ Lenderman (whose 2022 LP Boat Songs was put out by Florry’s label, the rising indie Dear Life Records). What set The Holey Bible apart was its ragged, blown-out sound. It was more like a bootleg of studio jams than a normal “proper” album. The aesthetic was summed up by the title of the first single: “Drunk And High.”

What I loved is that The Holey Bible had nothing in common with the popular indie albums of the time, which tended to be quieter and more orchestrated. Florry, in contrast, is like a down-home band from the early ’70s, reminiscent of “ditch” era Neil Young or the country numbers from Exile On Main Street. (Or the outtakes from that album too sloppy to see the light of day.) Even better, The Holey Bible was an indie-rock record that actually rocked.

So, it was no surprise to hear Medosch go on about her formative influences (Bob Dylan and Lucinda Williams) or the go-to soundtrack in the tour van (the Rolling Stones’ Some Girls: Live In Texas ’78) during a Zoom interview earlier this month. Nor was I shocked to learn that one of her day jobs is working in a dispensary. (“I like to get high,” she deadpanned.) You can hear all that on the latest Florry record due this Friday, Sounds Like…, which is slightly less anarchic than The Holey Bible but thankfully nowhere close to slick.

“I like how it can be really chaotic but tight at the same time. Loose but in the pocket is really cool to me,” she said. “That’s my big thing live. I love [Dylan’s] Rolling Thunder Revue. I had a huge obsession with that. I own probably six different bootlegs from that tour. When I first started listening to that, I was so blown away. It really clicked in my head like, ‘Okay, I need at least six people in this band.’”

Guitars, fiddles, pedal steel, punch-drunk drums – they all create a murky wall of sound on Sounds Like… that doesn’t quite obscure Medosch’s storytelling lyrics. More than ever, she set out to write “epic songs” that dwell on slice-of-life vignettes, like the cataclysmic car accident recounted in “Truck Flipped Over ’19” (which sounds like Waylon Jennings’ heretofore secret Black Sabbath phase) or the road-trip romance of “Pretty Eyes Lorraine” (a biker-girl spin on “Far Away Eyes”).

It’s a big leap for an artist who’s been putting out music since she was 14. Which might also explain why Medosch on Sounds Like… already has the vibe of a grizzled classic-rock vet at age 24.

When did you start really getting into music?

I was 15 when I started going to shows in West Philly. Funny enough, that’s when I met Jon Samuels from Dear Life Records. He used to buy me 40s.

Were you sneaking in?

It was mostly house shows I would go to. There was a great West Philly house show scene. It was really in its prime. In 2013, there was this whole scene of harder punk bands and then that kind of died down and gave way to this house show scene that was a little softer. I got to see a lot of cool bands at that time.

That was when Philly became the capital city of American indie rock for a while.

There were three years where everyone who graduated from Bard College or possibly lived in Brooklyn was starting to move to Philly and starting bands and shit. It was fun. There was a lot of new music that I wouldn’t have thought to listen to. It was definitely aligning with the music I was finding on blogs. I didn’t have a phone until I was a senior in high school, so I would just look at blogs and go to shows to find out about music. Or it was the music that my mom showed me.

What was your mom into?

When I was a kid, my mom really liked Wilco and Lucinda [Williams] and a lot of hip-hop and Elvis Costello and all these different types of music. She liked Big Star and stuff. And I saved that in my head basically my whole childhood. And then my stepdad, he is kind of a musical savant. He doesn’t play any instruments, but he just knows everything. He knows a lot about jazz and he showed me a lot of Bob Dylan stuff. When I was 14, he bought the Another Self Portrait box set and that opened up a lot of my musical world.

That’s a fascinating Dylan era to start with, given that Self Portrait for years was considered the worst Dylan album. And then that perception started to shift with that box set.

Definitely. At that time I had a copy of New Morning and I would listen to that every day. I loved that vibe, just because the mid-’60s heroin stuff, I think, freaked me out. I just didn’t get it. “I Want You” and “4th Time Around,” those were pretty songs to me. But I didn’t understand what he was doing. So, I got really attached to that early ’70s, late ’60s kind of country vibe that he did.

I’m kind of a Bob Dylan purist. I listen to everything now, but back then, it was easy for me to get attached to that country stuff.

You can draw a direct line from those Dylan records to what you’re doing with Florry. But you were also going to these house shows. I imagine you must have also had a punk phase.

I was kind of a punk when I was a kid. I would do some bad things. I would leave on the weekends to go party in New York City and then I would come back on Sunday night really late. And I did definitely have a punk phase. When I was 19, I had a post-punk, no-wave-y kind of band in Philly, because there was a huge scene for that kind of music for a second in Brooklyn and Philly, and I was really influenced by that stuff. I was listening to a lot of Au Pairs and The Slits and that kind of stuff.

When did you start writing songs?

I was 13 or 14. I started writing instrumental music, kind of inspired by Animal Crossing music. I was really into Legend Of Zelda when I was a kid. Not so much anymore; It’s hard for me to play video games without falling asleep.

So, you were working on a keyboard?

On a keyboard and stuff on guitar, too. I was also really into bossa nova music at that time, so I mixed those two together.

Video game music and bossa nova?

Yeah, it went together well with the games I was playing.

You might have to revisit that.

I put out an album when I was 14. It’s all instrumental, looping, background music kind of stuff. And there was a tape on a UK label that’s still up on the internet. It’s actually mostly guitar, and I tried to use a bunch of different guitar noises. I tried to make drum noises out of distorted guitar. I’m proud of it because I was a little baby.

You really came to your own with Florry on The Holey Bible. That’s where the band started to have that loose and chaotic quality. How did you get to that place?

I didn’t play a lot of music during college, and I got really sick of typical indie rock, the stuff that people around me were making. I just started to not understand that music. At the same time, I was digging in more with these artists that I grew up listening to, and I was like, “There’s got to be a way I can play this kind of music, but still have it sound new.” Once I realized that I wanted to play that kind of music, I started focusing on writing that kind of music and evolving with it, and also the way I write the lyrics. Between The Holey Bible and this next one, I put way more thought into how I was writing. I wanted to write more stories than just personal silly songs or whatever. I wanted to have epic songs.

I think what attracted me to your band is that it wasn’t as orchestrated or muted as a lot of indie rock records in the early 2020s, especially singer-songwriter music. It had that loose swagger that I love from rock records of the early ’70s.

I didn’t want to do quiet folky stuff. I honestly just wanted to get away from the indie world and that kind of typical songwriting, and more into the alternative rock kind of world where it’s just more bombastic. I wanted to make a kick-ass kind of music, if that sounds goofy or whatever.

There’s also a southern flavor to Florry’s music, even though you’re from Pennsylvania.

Definitely. I mean, I love a lot of country music. That was a new obsession of mine. During the pandemic, I got really into pedal steel. I started playing pedal steel, and from there I started collecting all these records that I call “hot pickers” albums, which is just the Nashville A team making records that don’t have any singers on them. But they’re just really goofy and have crazy riffs the whole time and shit like that. And that definitely influenced the sound of my music a lot. And also, I listen to a lot of Neil Young, a lot of Bob Dylan, and I think for a while I tried singing like that more, which now I kind of shy away from that. I just try to sing the way I talk, I guess.

Sonically, your records have that “ditch”-era Neil vibe, for sure. Though I would say you push a little further into the murk. Your music sometimes sounds like the bootleg version of the “proper” record. Your vocals aren’t always clear in the mix, and everything feels a little woozy.

Yeah, I know what you mean.

To be clear, I mean that as a compliment.

I wanted it to sound fucked up. I wanted it to sound pretty murky and weird. I wanted people to be able to listen to it and be like, “Oh yeah, this sounds like Florry, the way I’ve seen them live,” but on record instead of in front of you.

When I wrote about The Holey Bible, I said that the band sounded wasted when they made it. Again, I meant that as a compliment. But are intoxicants literally part of your recording process?

Me and John Murray smoke a lot of weed. I work at a dispensary, so that’s my other job, and I like to get high. I’m actually taking a break from smoking weed and cigarettes right now just for my voice. But yeah, a lot of the band likes to drink and smoke weed and stuff like that. When we’re recording, we like to have a couple beers or whatever just to get the vibe right.

Have you ever tried honey slides?

I have not tried honey slides, but I’ve had a lot of people say I should.

It sounds like a nightmare.

Just what people said about making On The Beach, it sounds scary.

You recently moved from Philly to Vermont. Has that affected your songwriting?

Yeah. I started working on music that I eventually want to release under my own name, and I’ve been synthesizing genres that Florry doesn’t really touch. Stuff like classical and jazz music and children’s music and traditional folk music. I’ve actually been writing a lot of children’s-oriented music that’s a bit more whimsical and about life lessons and stuff like that, just because it’s fun to write that kind of music. And then I’ve been trying to write and incorporate more jazz and classical and stuff into it.

I got really obsessed with NRBQ, and for years, I’ve been wondering if there was any music that did what they did, where you’re synthesizing rock and rockabilly and old blues and jazz music to this crazy degree. Then I found out about them and I was like, “Wow, I’ve been searching for this band for years, and I finally found it.” And from there it’s inspired me so much to listen to the way they play live and all the different ways that they approach songwriting. That’s been hugely influential for some of this new stuff.

Sounds Like… is out 5/23 via Dear Life Records. Find more information here.