by Bob Keeley
From the very beginning in 1995 (and even before that in Roine Stolt’s solo album called The Flower King) the band, The Flower Kings, have lived up to their hippy-influenced name. It is not rare to find songs evoking the importance of peace and love on their 16 previous studio albums, one of which is even called Flower Power. So when the title for their new album was revealed to be Love, it suggested that this album would likely cover the same ground as some of its predecessors. And it does. But that’s not a bad thing.
While Love is not strictly a concept album, the theme of love as an antidote to the ills of the world is found in almost all of the songs, and it can be thought of as an album in three acts. Similar to other recent Flower Kings albums, Love contains no 20-30 minute epics as in some of their earlier albums, but rather they make the point with a series of shorter pieces and two ten-minute songs.
Love opens with the up-tempo “We Claim the Moon.” A strong guitar and bass riff opens the album over a persistent drum track. The ascending melody, written, as is nearly everything on Love, by Roine Stolt, celebrates a world made brighter and richer by a relationship. “I’ll never get over the way that you brought down the moon,” Stolt and Hasse Fröberg sing. The shared lead vocals, one of the hallmarks of Flower Kings over the years, again works beautifully on Love. This is the hardest rocking song on the album and gets things off to a great start.
The band quickly moves to the first short epic of the album, and one of two early highlights, the 11-minute “The Elder.” This song about power of love over conflict has a beautiful but simple five-note repeating motif that effectively connects the various parts of the piece. Another of the Flower Kings’ signature characteristics is in full flower (no pun intended) in this track: Stolt’s expressive and emotive lead guitar. Stolt continues to impress with the melodic way he plays. Lalle Larsson’s equally expressive keys do a great job of serving as the backdrop for much of the lead work from Stolt as well as giving us a series of beautiful keyboard solos.
The third track, “How Can You Leave Us Now?” is the other highpoint of the first third of the album. Opening with piano and bass, (played with great sensitivity by original member Michael Stolt) this track features a soaring and memorable melody that evokes sadness. The song, a lament about a non-specific coming darkness and bemoaning that some higher power seems to be gone.
When “How Can You Leave Us Now?” ends, a new section of the album begins, kicked off with an overture, “World Spinning.” This track, written by Larsson and perhaps played entirely on keyboards, is followed by “Burning Both Edges.” As Stolt said about this song when it was released as a single, “Love could change everything, but we chose to burn the house down time after time.” This is followed by “The Rubble,” a song about the need for us to change.
Another instrumental piece, “Kaiser Razor,” opens the third and longest section of the album, songs about creating a new and better world. After two short songs, “The Phoenix” and “The Promise,” we get to the real meat of this final act of the album, a trio of excellent songs, each longer than the previous one, beginning with “Love Is,” a song with the kind of melodic gravitas that Stolt does so well. This ode to love reads like a secular version of the famous biblical chapter on love from I Corinthians 13. This is followed by “Walls of Shame” in which we are found “waiting here for the winds of change.”
This final suite, ending in “Considerations,” written by Michael Stolt (and which features a killer keyboard solo) brings the album to a fitting conclusion as the songs build in grandeur and The Flower Kings craft a vision of a better world.
Since The Flower Kings are so prolific, it can be easy to pass off a new album from them as just another album, and at first glance, Love could appear to be merely a collection of songs that are in the same mold as other Flower Kings albums, especially the recent ones. But closer inspection shows that it is a carefully constructed song cycle in which The Flower Kings beautifully paint a portrait of Stolt’s hope for peace and love and, as he notes in “Walls of Shame,” “a great awakening.”
Released on May 2nd, 2025
Order LOVE now at: https://theflowerkings.lnk.to/LOVE
LOVE Tracklist:
1.We Claim The Moon
2.The Elder
3.How Can You Leave Us Now!?
4.World Spinning
5.Burning Both Edges
6.The Rubble
7.Kaiser Razor
8.The Phoenix
9.The Promise
10.Love Is
11.Walls Of Shame
12.Considerations
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