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May 22, 2025 Web Exclusive By Mark Redfern Photography by Connor Turque

Sitting smack dab in the middle of Florry’s new album, Sounds Like…, is a molten account of witnessing a horrific accident while motoring away from South by Southwest six years back. Talking via Zoom from her kitchen in Burlington, Vermont, Francie Medosch describes “Truck Flipped Over ’19” as her Beach Boys suite. Though the So Cal melody makers may not have ever put together anything so gritty (“Truck Flipped Over” is no subtly shifting “Little Honda”), the phases and stages the song goes through make the comparison make sense.

“I took a story that happened to me and inserted another character into it that would process it differently,” Medosch says. “The way the truck flips over [in the song] is exactly how I saw it. It was levitating through the air and it just ‘smack’ hit the ground. We called the cops and the ambulance, but we were on the other side of the highway. It’s supposed to be a metaphor for when something is so painful to look at, you think you can avoid it by shielding your eyes. But those things will come back to haunt you if you don’t pay attention to them and do something about it.”

If “Truck Flipped Over ’19” is about suffering through PTSD, Medosch also admits to a touch of ADHD. At the start of the interview she politely asks if it’s okay to “chop up a few onions” while we talk. Medosch grew up in Chestnut Hill, Pennsylvania, which she describes as one of the last towns before you leave Philly and right next door to Mount Airy, where Kurt Vile hails from. “My mom always played a bunch of country and Americana music when I was a kid,” Medosch explains. “She had magazine subscriptions where she would get these mix tape CDs in the mail with different stuff like hip-hop and pop. But she was never shy to also play all country music. So I never had that distaste that a lot of people had for country.”

Although a veteran of what Medosch describes as a “disco rock band” and a no-wave post punk band, where she “screamed into the mic and shit,” Florry’s tunes are definitely underpinned with a frayed country lining. “When I was around 12, I heard The Byrds’ Sweetheart of the Rodeo. And that was pretty wild to me because at the time I was getting into The Beatles and The Byrds’ more power poppy stuff,” Medosch says. “That album changed me. Gram Parsons became a pretty influential musician for me. Him and Alex Chilton, I think have this similar trajectory of getting jaded by the world and losing the youthful energy they originally had. It’s like when Paul Westerberg of The Replacements realized the world [can be] so bad and his songs took this dark trajectory.”

Medosch stayed Philly based for a long time, but recently pulled up roots and moved to Vermont. “There’s a lot of things that happened that made me want to get away from Philly for a bit,” she says. “The air isn’t that good for you and I have asthma. And the driving is really stressful. In West Philly, once it gets dark people just don’t stop at stop signs. John Cox, our pedal steel player, came with me. He’s my roommate and we dated for a year and a half. We don’t [just] play local shows anymore, so it was okay for us to leave and get some space.”

Medosch wraps up her onion chopping, without shedding a tear. “If you have a really sharp knife, it cuts through the walls of the cells in the onion without crushing them. If you use a dull knife you release all this shit into your face and start crying,” she explains. “I’m making what I do for breakfast. I prep cook the onions sautéed in a bunch of spices—cumin, coriander, cayenne and black pepper, and a little bit of curry powder. I caramelize them in this guy,” Medosch says as she holds up an iron skillet, “until they are nice and stringy and then I add a bunch of chorizo.” Post gym workout, Medosch will add some fresh eggs to the mix and stretch the batch out over the course of a week. Though science lessons and cooking demonstrations may not have been on the menu, the ingredients to Florry’s latest album definitely were. “I started writing in January of ’23 and it took me about a year to do the whole thing. We recorded most of the songs in Asheville with Colin Miller at Drop of Sun,” Medosch says. The morning of our interview the band released “Pretty Eyes Lorraine,” which was the last song recorded and only one put to tape in Philly. The whole album has a raggedy edge to it and “Pretty Eyes” is no exception. “When I wanted things to sound more alive we recorded live,” Medosch says. “And there’s a lot of that for sure. But I also wanted to fuck around with the production more on this one because I produced the last one, but my only idea of production was to be in the same room and play at the same time. There’s a lot more production behind some of the songs. More layering and certain moments where I wanted to create a small series of movements. Colin has done a lot of production and is smart. He knows how to make an album [sound] really dirty.”

“Truck Flipped Over ’19” may be about as dirty a sound as you can get, but the opening seven-minute blast of “First it was a movie, then it was a book” makes for a great sampler of what Sounds Like… has on offer. Flexing on some classic rock riffs, the band shifts through passages of country boogie and more soothing down tempo moments. All while Medosch salutes Holly Hunter and mixes in a handful of swipes at cinemaphiles. “It’s about someone picturing their life as a Hollywood movie because they’re bored and have nothing to do with their life,” Medosch explains. “I’m not trying to reference a specific Holly Hunter movie in the song, but I was really into Broadcast News at the time. I love that movie. Holly Hunter has a really great cry. She’s very emotive. I love her. But the character in the song is a total loser. It was just an idea about someone who has gone way too far thinking they see themselves in movie characters who are nothing like them. Making fun of the film bros or something like that.”

Medosch is certainly comfortable talking about the source material for her songs, but can take exception to certain comparisons. “A lot of times people are like, ‘Oh you sound like this on that song,’ and I’ll be like ‘I’ve literally never heard of that song,’” Medosch says. [Of course I stubbed my own toe with references to Iris Dement and The Clash during our talk, but there’s at least some range there]. “I love classic rock riffs and always will. It’s definitely in my blood. But I try to be as original as I can. It’s about synthesizing different genres and different songs that are out there in the world and making them into a new thing rather than just regurgitating it. Someone tried to compare our sound to The Allman Brothers’ Live at Fillmore East. And we literally have never even talked about that album as a band. Not one time. Or someone will say ‘Johnny Cash must be a huge influence on this band.’ Just random stuff. And I’m like, ‘No. In fact, not at all.’ I’m always happy to discuss our influences as a band. But when people get it wrong too many times, I’ve started to get withdrawn from that.”

Medosch and Florry have been working hard the last few years. With three sets at ’23’s Hopscotch Festival (I caught two of those for Under the Radar), the band also found time for a mid-festival side trip to open for Superchunk that didn’t go as well. Putting themselves out there is one of the things Florry does best and Sounds Like… showcases that well. Like the batch of onions and chorizo that she whipped up while we were talking, Medosch and her music touch on patches of spiciness, depth, sweetness and all things in between. Inquiring if breakfast turned out well, Medosch says, “It did. I’m about to eat it.”

www.florry.bandcamp.com

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