Thank San Diego for giving us Iron Butterfly, Blink-182 & Stone Temple Pilots but it’s got another distinction now. In 2019, a group of wise-beyond-their-years SD teens, singer/guitarist Tuesday Denekas (they/them), drummer Milla Merlini (she/her) and bassist Sasha A’Hearn (she/her), rose like punk-pop phoenix’s from the ashes of their previous band to corral guitarist/singer Charlee Berlin (who owned but didn’t know how to play her instrument at first) to resurrect Denekas’ songs of heartbreak and determination, starting out as the Fluorescents with 2020’s noteworthy ‘self-titled’ EP. Proudly christening themselves The Inflorescence, the band found the right home with Kill Rock Stars to unleash their debut LP Remember What I Look Like (due Summer of 2022). The group faces challenges like juggling high school and college classes, finding all-age venues in town to play and rejecting gender labels as they explain: “in a largely male-dominated industry, we see how undermined we are for being a no-man band, and we see how being on stage empowers alternative girls and non-binary people.”
Blasting off with a blaring guitar intro which leads us to a heart-breaking, desperate chorus of “how much more can I really say/until you just drift away” with echoes/shout-backs of encouragement before breaking down into light strumming and desperate pleas (“how many times can I lower my expectation of you”), is it any wonder that the song halts with a sudden stop at the end, with the singer audibly exhaling, relieved to get this unbearable anguish out their system?
press photos by Alex Tchoukhrova
video by Emma Thomas
