Floral Image - Home Coming Gig 2025

Indelibly Stamped Images

Floral Image at Norwich Arts Centre

Saturday, 31st May, 2025

  

The boys are home! Floral Image have landed.  

I’m so excited about tonight! said Nancy.  As was everyone who bundled into Norwich to see the city’s finest band come home.  There has not been such a wildly anticipated home town gig for any Norwich band for many months.  There was even a ticket scammer out there for this one, fleecing the ticketless, so keen was everyone to be at Norwich Arts Centre to attend the final gig of Floral Image’s 2025 European tour.

 

By all accounts the dates in Nantes, Agens, Tours and Eindhoven were very good nights for the band, but then the Green Door Store, Brighton proved exceptional. My god, all those nights would have had to be out of body experiences to better the transcendental power of the Norwich show.  What a night this turned out to be.

 

The city’s music lovers were out in force for this one on a steamy Saturday night.  Openers, the jazz-psyche-rock crew Mink, would have been thrilled with the crowd if this had been their headline show. They found themselves playing to 65% or more of the available audience.  There was real love for their set and the interval talk was about how different and how engaging their tunes were, particularly with the flautist playing such a significant solo role in the mix.  This band features the most rock-flute since the heyday of Jethro Tull. After this night, Mink’s growing following grew some more. 

 

The nave of the old church was almost full for the Trip Westerns, led from under a ten-gallon hat by Harrison Baird-Whitman.  They had joined Floral Image’s tour for the last three nights and definitely pushed the excitement up a notch or two in advance of the night’s main feature.  I first saw Trip Westerns at the old Voodoo Daddy’s Showroom on Timber Hill, but I hadn’t stayed the course that night, so it was good to see them going down so well here in a bigger venue, with a stronger set, that lays cool harmonica solos across a consistently heavier sound, which has the feel of West Coast rock sensibility.  I still don't quite get what they are doing, but what is happening is that they are building up a head of steam and Trip Westerns were very well received by the Norwich crowd.  

 

The temperature on the last day of May in Norwich cleared 26°C with high humidity, not exactly perfect for an evening to cram into old St. Swithin’s church, (built 1349 CE) with fellow music lovers, young and old.  It was hot in there and the mingled perspiration of the people was condensing on the cool ancient stone pillars.  No one wanted to miss the appearance of Floral Image.  Nothing can beat the pre-gig excitement from a stoked music crowd, but how would the band make their entrance, after such a period on the road?

The fanfare from “La Soiree” by David Ordini, (familiar to football fans as the theme tune to ITV's The Big Match), with an accompanying slideshow about the main feature we were about to see, presaged the return of the heroic travellers.  Their appearance on stage was greeted with sustained cheers and a hand-painted sign reading “There’s a hole in my 💛 that only Floral Image can PHIL" b/w "I 💛 Floral Image” waving about a couple of metres deep into the crowd.  The band seemed surprised that they had fans that cared that much.  It didn’t take long to find out why they are creating such a buzz.

Opening with Meadowland, which kicks off their debut album Gone Down Meadowland, you could feel that there was going to be much, much more to come.  The fanfare, the slideshow, the cheers, the moody intro track, (reminiscent of the Brian Jonestown Massacre) then, BOOM, Floral Image pushed the accelerator hard to the floor.  All thoughts and memories of the opening acts were blown away; all sense of the mundane day-to-day wiped clean.  Floral Image demand and command full attention.

Mixing it up with tracks from their thrilling first EP,  So Synthesised, the set delivered a frenetic series of mood-lifting melodies, beautifully phrased lines, well-timed breaks and solos. The sound of Floral Image is the sound of excitement, rocking good times and rolling dance tunes.  Here is a band totally in tune with each other.  The music is swirling symphonic magic.  They are fully synced after their extended van-time touring around Europe and project the sense that here is a group that is more than a band, a band who have become brothers. How differently some tours have historically ended. Floral Image are having such a good time doing their thing, that it is just a joy to be part of it with them. 

 

As the set moved on through Voices, into Burning 305, the heat and humidity demanded it was time to Call Up The Doctor, a thought provoking piece about the confusion of needing love and wanting love from someone who doesn’t share the love.  The song lyrics do not always project the vivacious spirit that the music suggests. This is a serious-minded band for all the excitement they create on stage.  

Jack Warner does the chat betwixt the numbers, keeping it light, filling the briefest of gaps with good-natured asides , whoops and excited howls.  There are no words for the emotion (and sweat) consuming the room. 

The Score lands gently, but it’s been the power of Mitch Forsyth’s drums that piloted this track. Forsyth and bassist Matt ‘Tex’ Kennedy’s had already firmly established that they are no stand at the back, play it simple, rhythm section.  What these two contribute  is the thriving pulse of Floral Image. 

 

Boogie Town is surprisingly low-key for a song with ‘boogie’ in the title.  It’s trippy, but captures the ennui of being lonely in a flashy space, until “she shoots to me the ol’ look up her sleeve and I’m so ready for her”

  

Warner at the keyboards (and occasionally not), who stands some six feet plus tall, stage right, in his bright yellow tee under a lurid yellow and blue knitted waistcoat is the connection to the crowd.  Leading the vocals, adding the electro-twiddles, the sweeping waves of synth.   Fergus Nolan, stage-left, serious guitar-face behind drooping moustache and shaggy hair, is vocals and harmonies, the serious quiet man.  Phil Whitton is having a good time to his left on electric guitar, tip-toeing around, sometimes acting as sidekick, to the Joey-Ramone-thin, dancing bass man, free-wheeling Kennedy. 

 

Merry mayhem, but not a drop spilled

On stage, Kennedy is the Iggy Pop of bass guitar; the Wilko Johnson of bass guitar; he is the totally unique Matt ‘Tex’ Kennedy of bass guitar.  The man brings his full range of guitar playing talent to the bass guitar, and manages to dance, leap and roll around the stage, with the occasional cheeky wiggle, without missing a single beat.  How he extricated himself from rolling about on the floor mid-tune was testament to his Spiderman-like agility.

Together, Floral Image exude deep affection for each other. There are lots of smiles, little interactions that show the sincerity of their mutual chemistry.  It is so good to see a band having a bloody good time and that just flows down from the stage, mixing the love with all that perspiration in the auditorium. 

The audience was a wonderful mess of people.  There were plenty of local musicians in the crowd to see the return of the boys, their friends, their soulmates.  There were a good number of youngsters, freed from exam revision as well as the older, well-heeled, affluent Norwich arty-set.  The advance ticket price was a gift to be honest.  Such a superb night’s entertainment, in a wonderful setting, at that price, is a tribute to Norwich Arts Centre’s community spirit.

They should be on the main stage at Glastonbury I was advised when walking home.  Yes, I can see it.  Floral Image are on a high right now.  Summer’s here and the time is right for a band of such crowd-pleasing quality.  The extended instrumental Tiergarten is something that would get a corpse jigging around and as for Gallipoli, from the EP, played here during the encore, it’s possibly the track that could be described as the epitomy of the Floral Image sound.  Then there is Sun For Hire – superb!

I won’t detain you any longer.  I want to get to their vinyl LP and wallow in this wonderful release on Fuzz Club Records.  This Floral Image show was one of the most enjoyable gigs I have ever been privileged to witness.  Welcome home Floral Image, it was worth the wait! 

Words: Spencer Ide

Photography copyright: Gordon Woolcock

1st June 2025