Portsmouth's Flowvers play The Wedgewood Rooms as they aim to be 'the best band you've ever heard'

Anyone who was there can tell you what happened next. Torrential rain and gale-force winds saw many stages cancelled on quite justifiable health and safety grounds.

As they freely admit now, ‘tears were shed.’ It’s hard to tell how serious he’s being, but bassist Henry Wood says: ‘I was crying in a portable toilet with half a bottle of absinthe.’

But the Portsmouth-based four-piece band made sure the wait was worth it when they were invited back to play the same stage this summer.

‘We said to ourselves, it wasn’t the right year,’ says vocalist and guitarist Matisse Moretti, ‘and then this year, there we are. And what a set we played! I think it was our best show.’

Drummer Connor Griffiths agrees: ‘I loved it, it was an amazing stage, a load of people down there, the atmosphere was great, people were engaging, it was everything you could ask for.’

The band will have been together three years in November, and although they are all still in their late teens, are giving this project their full attention.

And the praise has been coming in from all directions with bloggers, BBC Introducing, Radio X and Spotify among those touting the band.

Describing their songs as being influenced by new wave, shoegaze, dreampop and Indie, they also claim on their Facebook profile: ‘We want to be the best thing you have ever heard.’

When asked if that’s a touch immodest, lead guitarist Stanley Powell says: ‘You know what, why not? Right now, we’re listening to some great bands locally, and we’re among bands who aren’t really getting heard, and they’re great. We do want to be the best band you’ve ever heard.

‘And we need to get heard by the right people, and we’ve got to keep pushing.’

Current single She Don’t Talk About It has certainly got them heading in the right direction. Influential music blog, Line of Best Fit described it as having ‘the indie chorus of the year.’

What did they make of that?

Stan says: ‘That was pretty amazing to hear, just to know that a song we had worked so hard on was going down so well. It makes it seemed like all the hard work was worth it.’

Matisse adds: ‘I don’t want to sound arrogant, but I felt we knew that chorus had something, we were jamming it and it was getting bigger and bigger and bigger.

‘We were in the studio in Manchester with Gethin Pearson, who’s worked with Jaws and Crystal Fighters, recording that one. That was such an experience. It was a bit of reassurance someone else saying that, that they were hearing it the way we’re hearing it.’

As to their sound, Matisse continues: ‘The sound was really natural, we all have very specific music tastes. When it comes to the sound it’s a mix of attitude and feeling and being heartfelt.

‘We never sat down and said we’re going to be this genre - and aimed for something.

We want to leave it up to our audience and our listeners to decide what it is. We feel like we’re playing the songs that come naturally to us.’

Now the boys are looking forward to returning to The Wedge – where the first headlined last September.

‘When we headlined it last year, and that was an amazing show for us,' says Henry, ‘but we were very undeveloped as a band. It will be good to show what we’ve been doing over the last year and how much we’ve developed since then.’​​​​​​​

Flowvers

The Wedgewood Rooms, Southsea

Saturday, October 12

wedgewood-rooms.co.uk