Stillblue Releases Intimate Melancholic EP, Flora
Stillblue is created by Daniel Estrada (lap steel/keys), Diego Gomez (drums), Yamil Granda (bass), Enrique Rosell (vocals/guitar), and Sofia Soriano (vocals/guitar). Stillblue is the five-piece band emulsifying indie-rock, folk, and alt-country with lyrics revolving around love, loss and getting older. We sat down with the group to chat all about their debut EP Flora. With an immersive storytelling atmosphere, Flora is the climatic story of love, loss and growing out of adolescence. Glistening with romantic melodies and melancholic vocals, Stillblue’s Flora project introduces listeners to a wildly rare sound that we know you’ll love.
[UNPUBLISHED:] I read that you all found each other through the local music scene. Can you tell us how you formed Stillblue?
[ENRIQUE:] I began playing guitar when I was 12, but my parents never really let me take it seriously. The deal was that my father said if I graduate from college and I have a job, there’s nothing else that they could say to me anymore. I could do whatever I wanted when it came to music. So I graduated, got a job and I was like ‘okay, I can’t put this off anymore’. I did an internship in Chicago and New York for the summer of 2019, but when I returned from that internship it felt like the end of my childhood. I began putting up fliers and that’s where I met Danny, who is our lap-steel player. We had one iteration of the band that is an entirely different band from what you see now. It ended up being just me and Danny, then I met Sofia on Halloween at a venue called Space Mountain, that no longer exists unfortunately due to the pandemic. When it comes to music, I always call Sofia my musical soulmate. The week that we began doing auditions for bass and drum members, the pandemic hit. We did another round of auditions and when we saw Yamil, it was a no-brainer. Diego was actually in a band with Sofia prior to all this called The Visual Arts Department. He was the last missing piece to the puzzle that really completed what stillblue is. We wanted to really be able to write together and be friends with the people that we’re working with.
[UNPUBLISHED:] How did you come up with the name Flora for the project?
[SOFIA:] It was going to be called Wildflowers at first because during the early stages of the pandemic I was just going on walks everyday with my parents. So I remember seeing a lot of little wildflowers and just listening to “Wildflowers” by Dolly Parton, Emmylou Harris and Linda Ronstadt. So it was going to be called that but we just weren’t feeling it, but we really wanted to focus on that flower aspect. So I suggested Flora.
[UNPUBLISHED:] Your debut EP begins with “Bluets”, a very melancholy and honest song about love and loss. Why did you feel as though this was the right song to open up this project?
[ENRIQUE:] I feel like “Bluets” makes me a little emotional to be honest. We went through like a million iterations of “Bluets”, but when I heard the final mix to the song it was truly the first time I heard a song that I had written where we had all collaborated on it and it really sounded like what I had always hoped to sound as a band. It’s a perfect introduction to who we are and what we hope to be as a band. I was Facetiming Sofia and we were messing around trying to write something. Then I hit those two notes, the cadence of the A7 to the E minor and something just struck in my head. It’s really a song about the way that thoughts continue to resurface and you are getting stuck in a certain period in your life.
[UNPUBLISHED:] “Song to Say Goodbye To” has to be genuinely one of the most beautiful songs I’ve listened to recently. Can you tell us what this song means to you?
[ENRIQUE:] First and foremost when it comes to “Song to Say Goodbye To”, I have to give a huge props to Danny, who’s lap-steel playing is just ridiculous on this song. The only other person that I saw during the pandemic was my old friend from high school, sometimes it felt like we were dating, sometimes it felt like we weren’t and we never did officially. She ended up moving to Mexico after college and she messaged me saying she was going to be in town so we decided to meet up. I hadn’t seen her since we graduated high school and it was this really weird realization that we’re very much the same but also very much different. When I showed the song to Sofia and Danny, I thought it was too simple. I thought it wasn’t complex enough. In high school I made this girl a CD mix and at the end I had this terrible, terrible ukulele song on it that I had written for her at the time. Danny and Sofia were sent their parts for the song and we did the live version in a week.
[UNPUBLISHED:] “Blind” closes off the EP and I’m obsessed with the lines: “just the thought of someone else beating your heart, your weakest part. Pull out my eyes, I’ll love you blind, pull out my spine, I’ll be alright.” It’s completely heart shattering yet so beautifully written, can you walk us through those closing lines for the EP?
[SOFIA:] One of the lines I used is from A Portrait as a Young Man by James Joyce where he’s basically saying there’s these characters in a Catholic school and they’re singing the song with the words ‘pull out my eyes’. I really gravitated towards that imagery. It was very much about these people that should not be together but it also feels like you can’t not be together. It’s always a weird idea of thinking that eventually this person will have this entire relationship with someone else.
[UNPUBLISHED:] If this EP could tell your listeners one message, what would that be?
[DIEGO:] This is the amalgamation of so many eras and so much work coming from so many different people. But I feel like this is Enrique’s magnum opus so far, he had this idea for this band. I’ve got to give credit where credits due, we all came together because of Enrique. We all came together because of him. This is our band now. But we wouldn’t all be here without his little spark that he started off. I feel like stillblue is just starting and this is where we all find our footing. Where we are going next is informed by this EP and it’s just, you know, it’s us.
