It's hard to keep up with all the stuff NJ label Sniffling Indie Kids puts out. I'm guilty of falling behind on their releases (on a lot of things, actually, but I'm working on it). It's almost as hard to keep up with the steady stream of work produced by Eric Goldberg. His latest effort, Happy Accidents, comes under the moniker Delicate Flowers, and Sniffling Indie Kids released the album earlier this month.
Delicate Flowers is a return for Goldberg to the one-man approach he took during the early recordings of his All Sensory Void (who put out a full-band album earlier this year) project. While All Sensory Void covers a lot of varied ground -- from psych rock to Americana -- Delicate Flowers comes off as a much more straightforward singer / songwriter project, mostly Goldberg's plaintive voice and guitar.
Opening track, "Dissolution," premiered here last month and sets Delicate Flowers up in that intelligent indie rock space staked out by someone like Elliott Smith. Goldberg shows that he has a sense for the epic on the anthemic "Break Me Wide Open." Things are a different kind of epic on "Possibilities" and "Seeking Oblivion," which both achieve a sweeping sense of space and, I don't know, "biggness" maybe.
There's a lot of looking inward for Goldberg on Happy Accidents: seeing a broken relationship right from the start but sticking with it anyway on "Dissolution;" maybe an allusion to the same situation with "I held you out of common sense / I gave you my boyhood romance" on "Vaseline;" "I wouldn't say that I was a good son" on "Possibilities;" "Guess I did the same fucking thing this time / Guess I always assume it'll be different" on "It's Easy to Love a Martyr."
Goldberg may view some of his pain as self-inflicted, but there are glimmers here and there that he's going to keep trying. The very next line on "Possibilities" is "But I'm trying to be more than worthless," and he calls out someone else for not taking chances on "Seeking Oblivion." Goldberg's a romantic, I guess, willing to go out on a limb in relationships time after time, even if they don't seem to work out all that often.
Goldberg is a real talent, and Happy Accidents is perfect for those times when you feel like you need to wallow just a bit. There are parts that will let you focus on whatever or whomever it is that's got you down; but, if you dig, you can find little nuggets of hope to keep you going.
Skylar Adler recorded, mixed, and mastered Delicate Flowers' Happy Accidents at Skylar Ross Recording in Wayne, NJ. Eric Goldberg played and wrote everything (with some additional percussion from Adler). Happy Accidents is available now via Sniffling Indie Kids.
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