Flock Of Dimes - Head Of Roses (LP)

Jenn Wasner has always written like someone sorting through a box of Polaroids, pulling out one memory at a time and holding it to the light. Head of Roses, her second album as Flock of Dimes, arrives in that spirit, a heartbreak record that refuses to wallow. It came out on Sub Pop in early April 2021, a spring-clean of a release, all fresh air and hard truths, made by a songwriter who knows how to make grief feel aerodynamic. If you only know Wasner from Wye Oak or from her role in Bon Iver’s touring band, the shift here is striking. The songs are lean, the hooks are quietly insistent, and the production feels like a home studio candlelit at midnight, every little detail placed just so.

Wasner co-produced the album with Nick Sanborn of Sylvan Esso, a partnership that makes perfect sense once you hear these tracks breathe. Recorded in North Carolina, much of it at Betty’s in Durham, the record builds its world from layered guitars, warm synths, and crisp percussion that moves like a heartbeat you can’t quite slow down. “Two” leads with a generous hook and a lyric that slices cleanly, a perfect entry point for anyone crate-digging for Flock of Dimes vinyl and wondering where to drop the needle first. Then comes “Price of Blue,” the emotional centerpiece, stretching out into six minutes of slow-bloom tension and a guitar solo that never grandstands, it just aches in long vowels. “Hard Way” tightens the screws, a head-nodder that balances bright melody against the tough business of letting go. “Lightning” flickers and swells, all shimmer and snap, while “One More Hour” closes the circle with the kind of late-night whisper that makes you feel like the stereo just leaned in.

The title points to a familiar push and pull, beauty and pain braided together, and the writing locks into that theme with a rare steadiness. These songs pick at the knots of independence and intimacy, the ways we talk ourselves into and out of connection, the lines we draw to protect ourselves that sometimes look, in hindsight, like fences. Wasner has said she was writing about how to honor other people’s needs while remaining true to her own, and you can hear that tug in small, telling turns of phrase. She isn’t lecturing, she’s documenting, catching the flicker of a thought before it gets cleaned up for company.

Critics heard it. Stereogum named Head of Roses its Album of the Week, calling out the album’s clarity and confidence. Pitchfork praised the craft and the way Wasner’s voice sits inside the arrangements rather than towering over them, which feels right. Around release, she brought the songs to NPR’s Tiny Desk (Home) with a focused band and a cool-under-pressure presence that made the material feel even more lived in. The year after, she expanded the universe with Head of Roses: Phantom Limb, an outtakes and live companion that underlines how strong this era’s writing was. None of it feels like leftovers.

If you are the kind of listener who measures records by how they sit on a turntable, Head of Roses is a sweet spot. The low end is present but not pushy, the stereo field is wide without getting showy, and the quieter passages invite you to lean forward. The Head of Roses vinyl pressing rewards that attention, the guitar harmonics in “Price of Blue” hanging in the room, the hushed vocal layers on “One More Hour” threading the needle between intimate and spectral. It is the record I hand to people who ask for Flock of Dimes albums on vinyl because it tells a whole story in 37 minutes.

I picked up my copy after seeing that Tiny Desk stream, in one of those early 2021 moments when we were all still stitching together a music life from screens. You could buy Flock of Dimes records online and get them shipped faster than a memory returns, which helped, but the first time I really heard it was at home, volume just past polite, rain on the window. If you stumble on it in a Melbourne record store, take it home and let Side A unspool before you commit to anything else. If you are hunting through a shop that specializes in vinyl records Australia wide, the Sub Pop logo on the spine is a reliable sign you have the right one. And if you happen to be deciding which Flock of Dimes vinyl to spin first, this is the one that feels like a friend dropping by to tell you a hard story, then staying long enough to make sure you are all right.