Press
“How Nick Kivlen Found a Mellow Psychedelic Groove of His Own”- Rolling Stone Magazine
He thinks back to the early days of his career with Cumming and Faber, when Rolling Stone named them “NYC’s coolest young rock band,” and the ways the world has changed since then. “The first Sunflower Bean album, we were working on it when Trump announced he was running, and then the entire first half of our career was during his presidency,” he says. A few years later, they campaigned hard for Bernie Sanders in the 2020 presidential primary as they worked on their third album, Headful of Sugar. “We did those two shows with Bernie, and then a week later, the pandemic happened…. I still want to find the way forward. But I am nostalgic for the time when I was 20 and everything was brand-new and malleable.”
“Nick Kivlen on DIY, Nostalgia, and Starting Over” - Interview Magazine
Kivlen’s debut solo album, Addicted to the Sunset, is thoroughly Californian. Full of psychedelic guitars and hazy harmonies, it’s a breezy, home-produced, folk-rock record that touches on the promises and pitfalls of nostalgia. On the cover, Kivlen is photographed in front of a warm desert horizon, his hands semi-transparently covering his eyes. The image hints at the album’s metaphysical bent, with songs that meditate on time, space, and the power of the universe. Ahead of the release, Kivlen spoke to me about what it all really means.
Nick Kivlen has spent the last decade chasing music around the world as a founding member of the band Sunflower Bean. Now, with his debut self-produced solo album, Addicted to the Sunset releasing independently on July 7, he’s turning inward and returning to a homemade creative process. Written, recorded, and produced in the sanctuary of Kivlen’s Los Angeles living room, across the country from his native New York, the record celebrates the small imperfections that remind us of the human hand. The sun-drenched album is inspired by a coastal California road-trip, its nostalgic hum propelling the next phase of Kivlen’s career into something entirely of his own making.
Kivlen said “I wanted to make a wet, drippy, folk album that sounded like it was dug up out of the sand in 1967. As for the lyrics, I kept coming back to this idea of nostalgia as a powerful drug. I was reflecting on my 20’s and all the optimism that I had. Putting those two elements together created the direction.”
A lot of the percussion was just a shaker and a tambourine. The album is literally pretty heavily arranged around a shaker, which is a $4 instrument that most people do last when they make an album. But it was the second thing I would do. I would play an acoustic guitar and map out the song, then I would add the shaker. The shaker would kind of be my glue that would hold everything together rhythmically. It ended up sounding really, what I thought, was cool. I love that it felt very alive and very fluid.
“Sunflower Bean’s Nick Kivlen releases “Starlight”" Alt Citizen
“Starlight” just might be this summer’s anthem. Home-recorded and entirely self-performed, Kivlen’s single carries a relaxed, sun-drenched sound. With lyrics reflecting, as Kivlen puts it, “the perspective I had when I was 20—the possibilities of the future, the yearning for a better world, and the fallout from chasing your dreams,”
Sunflower Bean celebrated the release of their fourth studio album, Mortal Primetime, with a show for the ages on May 22, packing the Greenpoint, Brooklyn club Warsaw with rock fans hungry for new thrills. It was a night to remember, with an opening set from New York psych-rock outfit GIFT, a surprise appearance from mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, and more.
Sunflower Bean’s self produced EP “SHAKE” (2024)
