Durand Jones & The Indications Announce New Album ‘Flowers,’ Share ‘Been So Long’
Durand Jones & The Indications, the progressive soul band consisting of Durand Jones, Aaron Frazer and Blake Rhein, have announced their new album, Flowers, releases June 27 via Dead Oceans.
The 11-track project, the trio’s first in four years, is described as “grown and sexy” music that will embrace “the softer side of soul and disco.”
Regarding the album, Jones shares, “All of these songs touch on such mature topics, things that we never got to sing about before. We are all in our 30s, have all been through ups and downs in our personal lives and professional lives, and flowers are a sign of maturity, growth, spring, productivity.”
For Jones, Flowers also represents his personal transformation. “I had spent the last year and a half laying everything out that I felt insecure about. I felt insecure about my sexuality, growing up poor, about a myriad of things,” he says. “I laid all of that out on the table, and it made me such a stronger person, to the point that I got back to the Indications, and I was way more sure of myself.”
Frazer comments, “We’re so blessed to have such a wide range of influence and musical minds that have such a good grip on the things that they love and the ability to synthesize those influences and bring them to a group setting. So we’ll continue to do what we’re doing for many years to come.”
Rhein adds, “When I think of Flowers, I think of this sense of naturalness. There’s a lot of courage in showing the human side of making music. We spent the most energy playing to each other’s strengths and learning how to support each other. Being able to make art from an intuitive level takes a lot of confidence, not second guessing yourself, not asking if it’s going to be well received.”
The album’s lead single, “Been So Long,” is available now. The petal-soft tune rides with the smoothness of an early ’70s soul jam, like William DeVaughn’s “Be Thankful for What You Got.” Their honey-sweet harmonies glaze the lush instrumentation as they sing about a reacquaintance.
“So pick me up / Drive around / Tellin’ everybody that we’re / Back in town / We’ll ride all night / And we’ll hit the spots / Ain’t too much / But it’s all we got,” they coo.
“‘Been So Long’ felt like a natural choice for the first single from the new album,” says The Indications. “Although it hasn’t been that long since we’ve been apart, it is the longest stretch the band hasn’t toured or released music in nearly a decade. The feeling of returning to your hometown is not unlike getting back together with your bandmates after a spell. Some things have changed nearly beyond recognition, while others are exactly as you always remembered.”
“Been So Long” is accompanied by a retro-style video, where they are joined by Chicago musicians Wyatt Waddell and Michael Damani, who also lent their vocals to the track.
Flowers is the follow-up to Durand Jones & The Indications’ 2021 album, Private Space. The project included the popular tracks “Witchoo,” “The Way That I Do,” “Ride or Die” and “Love Will Make It Work Out,” among others.
“At the end of the day, I just want people to close their eyes and forget where they are. Just the way a Stevie Wonder album does for me,” Jones said of Private Space.
Frazer added, “I feel we’ll be arriving into people’s lives as they’re exiting a really tough period. We’re not out of the woods, but hopefully, this allows people to get together again, to share and experience catharsis.”
Private Space was ranked in the top 10 of Rated R&B’s 30 Best R&B Albums of 2021 list. “Coagulating R&B, funk, disco, and soul into a fantastic voyage impacted by retro influences, the band manages to naturally produce an album that lies in a musical realm that’s equally exploratory as it is identifiable,” wrote Danielle Brisette.
Though it’s been four years since their last album release, Jones and Frazer kept their devotional fans fed with solo music.
In 2023, Jones released his first solo album, Wait Till I Get Over. The 12-track set included the singles “Lord Have Mercy,” “That Feeling,” “Sadie” and “See It Through.”
The album was a love letter to his hometown, Hillaryville, Louisiana. “With making this record, I wanted to tackle and overcome these things that made me uncomfortable from being poor and growing up in a neighborhood that was underserved — a neighborhood that was crumbling. It was living in memory,” Jones told Rated R&B in an interview.
He also shared what he hoped listeners would take away from the album: “I really would love to just show people the perspective of someone from the rural South, specifically the Black rural South. I want to show them that we are just as nuanced and complex and all of those things as much as anywhere else. There’s magic. There’s supreme deep magic and beautiful complexity in the rural South.”
Frazer released his sophomore album, Into The Blue, in July 2024.
The Baltimore-born singer and musician told Rated R&B, “Into The Blue really means heading into the unknown. That has been the last year of my life, and I’m still in the blue. But there are also songs here that celebrate love and the giddiness of a new relationship and all that. That’s part of a breakup to me, processing the whole thing, remembering the things that were right as much as the things that were wrong.”
Into The Blue included grooves like “Payback,” “Easy To Love” and “Time Will Tell.”
“It’s the clearest portrait of who I am as an artist,” Frazer said of the genre-spanning album, which merged soul, R&B, hip-hop, disco, and psychedelia into a delightful listen.
Stream Durand Jones & The Indications’ new song “Been So Long,” and see the tracklist for Flowers below.
Durand Jones & The Indications’ Flowers Tracklist
- Flowers
- Paradise
- Lovers’ Holiday
- I Need The Answer
- Flower Moon
- Really Wanna Be With You
- Been So Long
- Everything
- Rust and Steel
- If Not For Love
- Without You
Presave/preorder Flowers here