Los Angeles-based band The Pretty Flowers are excited to release their anticipated new album Never Felt Bitter on Chicago’s Forge Again Records (order). The album arrives after the release of acclaimed singles “Convent Walls,” “To Be So Cool” and “Came Back Kicking”which were praised by writers at Atwood Magazine, Bandcamp, The Big Takeover, NPR, Magnet Magazine, Under The Radar, and many more. To celebrate the release, the album is streaming in full at New Noise Magazine along with a track-by-track breakdown of the album written by the band.
The Pretty Flowers have announced tour dates in California in support of Never Felt Bitter. The band will be playing in San Diego, El Cerrito, Petaluma, Merced, San Franciscoand Ojai. The band has a Los Angeles Record Release Show taking place tonight at Healing Force of The Universe in Pasadena. Tickets for the show are on sale now.
The Pretty Flowers, formed in 2013 in Los Angeles by songwriter Noah Green, crystallized its core lineup of Green (vocals, guitar), Sam Tiger (bass, backing vocals), Jake Gideon (guitar, backing vocals) and Sean Johnson (drums, percussion) in 2018. The music on Never Felt Bitter is the result of playing together on hundreds of nights in innumerable bars and clubs across Southern California and beyond. Over the years the band has honed a fearsome melding of pop melodicism and raw physicality. Their knack for crafting catchy anthems for outsiders and underdogs has made them one of the most respected underground bands in L.A.
The album was born against a backdrop of constant upheaval in the band’s hometown. From the election to the fires to the ICE raids, stability in Los Angeles and beyond had never seemed less certain. “There’s a sense of urgency, fear and confusion that comes across in these new songs,” says Johnson. “Like each song might be the last song we write, or this might be the last album. If anything, it’s the most present we’ve ever been.”
The band’s power-pop foundation remains intact, but it’s reinforced by a heavier physicality and sharpened urgency, from the towering hooks of “Ocean Swimming” and the buzzsaw rush of “Never Felt Bitter (We Burn)” to the industrial pulse of “Ring True” and the ferocious momentum of “To Be So Cool.” Recorded at Adam Lasus’s Studio Red in North Hollywood and in a borrowed hilltop house overlooking the Pacific, the songs are built to match their wide-screen settings, with slow builds like “Thief of Time” cresting into tidal-wave choruses.
Lyrically, Never Felt Bitter moves through anxiety, regret, and resolve via vivid, fragmentary images that linger long after the final chord. While the band avoids direct emulation, echoes of The Replacements, Teenage Fanclub, and Superchunk drift through the record, folded into a sound that feels both familiar and newly forceful. Written and recorded by four musicians balancing day jobs and devotion, the album captures The Pretty Flowers operating as a true unit—finding release, connection, and conviction in loud, communal songs at a moment when the world feels increasingly unsteady.
The album’s sense of scale extends beyond the music itself. Its cover image comes from Control Zone, Bonnie Donahue and Warner Wada’s landmark photo essay documenting a family living in Belfast during The Troubles, discovered by Green while browsing a Boston bookshop. That tension between private endurance and wider social unrest came into sharp focus in April 2025, when the band debuted “Thief of Time” on the steps of Los Angeles City Hall during the 50501 protests. In front of tens of thousands, a song born from doubt transformed into an anthem of collective release, underscoring a record that feels deeply attuned to both personal reckoning and the wider moment it inhabits.
