Constant Smiles

Event Information

Much like the night-blooming flora the album takes its name from, Constant Smiles’ Felte debut Moonflowers is the product of slow, largely unseen patterns of growth. The New York-based band forged a strange and fascinating path all their own on the way here, one that has traipsed through various home bases, an exceptionally fluid lineup, and wild changes to their sound on almost every entry in a small kingdom of stylistically restless releases. Though the band gradually grew from existing as an amorphous collection of highly conceptual ideas and experiments into something easier to grasp, every step of their unlikely route has led to Moonflowers, a subtle masterpiece of internally-born ambient pop.

Constant Smiles was formed in 2009 by Ben Jones when he was living in Martha’s Vineyard. From the beginning, the project was as underground as is possible in the digital age. Every live show was dramatically unlike the last, as were the frequently-released, self-realized recordings. Jones was joined by different collaborators in versions of the band that manifested as noisy soundscapes, scenic chamber pop, or icy coldwave-adjacent synth-pop, often released on opaquely-designed, ultra-limited albums named after favorite film directors. These early phases captured the curiosity of a small but fixated group of fans worldwide, and the way Constant Smiles moved through the weird trajectory of their first decade made them feel like a closely guarded secret happening outside of the machinery of the music industry. A move to New York and a few records on Sacred Bones resulted in more people becoming aware of the band, but Jones and friends remained in constant flux. True to his d.i.y. roots, by the time one record was released, Jones had written a new set of songs and recalibrated the sound of the band from dismal electronic darkness to naturalistic dream pop.