Flypaper shares "On Your Mind" from debut album, out 7th November via PNKSLM
Flypaper
Shares "On Your Mind" Single - Listen Here
Debut album, Forget The Rush
Due 7th November via PNKSLM
UK Live Dates Throughout Autumn
“an exercise in dreamy reveries and quiet observation... There's a wistful, yearning quality reminiscent of Elliott Smith, where hushed vocals drive home hard-won wisdom.” - The Line of Best Fit
“Sear's voice carries an endearing wistfulness; a drifting nature that holds just enough weight to keep you chasing, intrigued at what else it has to say.” - GoldFlakePaint
"... a true gem in the indie folk or indie songwriter genre. It shows this tuned in knack for crafting songs with personal lyrics and expertly timed hints of pop undertones. Lovely.” - Austin Town Hall
Flypaper (aka London-based musician Rory Sear) will release his debut solo album Forget The Rush on 7th November via PNKSLM.
Following on from lead single "Oh Well" - which gained praise from The Line of Best Fit, The New Cue, AmericanaUK, GoldFlakePaint and more - today Flypaper shares "On Your Mind", on which Sear is found tracing the acrimonious collapse of a relationship over gently dawdling guitar.
Rory Sear says of the single: "This song's undeniably about age old relationship woes. The longing, or bitterness when despite efforts something ultimately doesn’t work. The banjo was actually a very last minute addition, I had recorded the lead riff on electric guitar like 10 times (louder, quieter, messier whatever) and it really wasn’t working, I’d recently brought myself this shitty banjo and gave it go & it really glued everything together when replacing the guitar. Looking back at the lyrics/meaning it might have been the universe giving me a sign that trying the same thing over and over again might be quite redundant. Moving on / trying something new can surprise you and be good thing. Sometimes."
Flypaper - "On Your Mind"
Streaming Services: https://PNKSLM.lnk.to/onyourmind
Album Preorder:
https://PNKSLM.lnk.to/forget-the-rush
Forget sweeping narratives, elaborate concepts or grand gestures: with his spellbinding debut as Flypaper, Rory Sear simply shares a snapshot of a year. Meditating on the precariousness of life in ones late-20s, and transforming the quiet mundanity of the everyday into something profound, his debut album Forget The Rush is a timely reminder to stop and take a breath, expressed in the bittersweet, sun-dappled vernacular of the singer-songwriter tradition.
Live Dates
17th September - Bedford, UK - Equires
20th November - Oxford, UK - The Library
26th November - Brighton, UK - Prince Albert
27th November - London, UK - Sebright Arms
More about Forget The Rush...
If Rory Sear’s creative vision seems out of step with a world moving at a million miles an hour, you can understand his motivation. Thanks to his father’s work, Sear’s was a particularly peripatetic childhood, divided between Scotland, North Carolina, Portsmouth and Somerset. One of his key emotional anchors during that period was guitar, which he first picked up aged seven and largely taught himself, bar a handful of classical lessons. The brash immediacy of pop-punk proved his earliest love, before he fell for the more sophisticated, narrative-driven songwriting of Brian Wilson, Harry Nilsson and Randy Newman in his teens.
You could say he drew on both schools of songwriting in Beachtape, the Brighton-based DIY four-piece he fronted while studying. Bringing a brilliantly breezy sensibility to melodic indie-rock, the quartet quietly fizzled out during the pandemic, following two EPs and a fistful of singles. Subsequently, Sear set about developing solo material as Flypaper, stealing his pseudonym from a song by influential 90s noise-rockers Brainiac.
As Sear explains, Flypaper actually began life as a piano project. “I was obsessed with Randy Newman so I bought a keyboard and had some friends help me record songs with a saxophone session guy.” He shudders, “It’s probably the worst idea I ever had.” Confronted by material he couldn’t stand behind, Sear scrapped the entire EP and started afresh, sans-piano. In his haste to make up for lost time, he stopped second-guessing his songwriting and stumbled upon Flypaper’s sleepy, acoustic guitar-led aesthetic.
Sear shared debut EP Big Nada in August 2023, which was re-released in 2024 via influential, Stockholm-based indie PNKSLM (ShitKid, Chemtrails, Sudakistan), as a companion piece to his second EP, Another Orbit. Together, the 12 tracks chronicled the first year of the project, with winningly lo-fi indie-rock redolent of Elliott Smith. If Big Nada/Another Orbit is evocative of Either/Or-era Smith, Forget The Rush feels more spiritually akin to XO, offering meatier arrangements, albeit with far fewer personnel.
Remaining faithful to his DIY roots, Sear wrote, recorded and self-produced the album in his bedroom across the space of six months, playing every instrument except for drums. Listen carefully and you may well hear muffled voices or the distant slam of doors in his London house-share, both of which only enhance the sense of intimacy communicated in Sear’s diaristic lyrics and world-weary semi-whisper.
Throughout, there’s a sense of a neat resolution being just out of reach, but it’s perhaps never as clearly communicated as it is on ‘Come Down’. Featuring backing vocals from Swedish outfit 7ebra, its appeal to “forget the rush” is echoed in its languorous arrangement, pairing strummed chords with chiming top notes.
Equal parts tender and truthful, Forget The Rush is as much a soundtrack to escape to, as it is an exploration of feeling unmoored. Take a step back from your reality and listen.
Album Artwork
Tracklisting
1. Fold
2. Oh Well
3. Come Down
4. Death Of Me
5. On Your Mind
6. Life Is Strange
7. Slow Down
8. Quite Right
9. Circus
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