FLO Prescribes a New Kind of Therapy
Therapy at the Club sees the British trio prove they’re ready for global domination.
By Samuel Albert
- Published on
One part a Destiny’s Child redux, another part Spice Girls with a digital twist, FLO – the British trio comprised of members Stella Quaresma, Jorja Douglas, and Renée Downer – sound more cohesive and more clear-eyed than ever across their sophomore LP Therapy at the Club. With the record’s cheeky lead single “Leak it” dominating the internet since its release back in March of this year, it’s only a matter of time before FLO will be as ubiquitous a pop outfit as their deliciously boastful and unabashedly confident lyrics suggest they already are.
“She (“Leak It”) definitely just felt big. The type of song that says ‘We’re here, did you miss us? Pay attention! Hello!’ We’re coming for everybody’s wigs,” said FLO about the now iconic single during a recent conversation with RANGE following an acoustic set to promote the new album in Liverpool. “We always just had a feeling that this song was going to kick off a new era. It certainly delivered and only continues to grow.”
Renee Downer.
Candidly discussing their new era with a synchronisation and pitch-perfect sense of mutual attunement as harmonious as their voices sound when blended together across their recorded music, FLO’s evolution as a group in the past two years has been a process of distillation, something that the 16-track juggernaut of an album all but confirms.
“I think that the main difference between this album and the last project was that we wanted to write separately,” says Quaresma. “We wanted to divide and conquer, and we really wanted to take ownership of a room individually, which wasn’t the norm for us before. On this album, we would write songs on our own and then come back together after having time apart. It was a really healthy and positive process that allowed us to grow individually and then in return stronger as a trio.”
And stronger they certainly are. Since coming together in the twilight days of the pandemic, FLO has steadily proven themselves one of the most energizing and delightfully unpredictable groups pushing the boundaries of pop and R&B. From a cameo by Cynthia Erivo on their first LP, to sampling Felly and Technotronic’s “Pump up the Jam” as an inflating backtrack to Therapy at the Club’s playful “Pose,” FLO has honed their lyrical, rhythmic, and bombastic pastiche across their music with an expressiveness that can’t help but worm itself into your brain.
“It’s such a special thing to not only sing together, but watch each other sing and grow. We have lots of fun in the studio, and lots of fun writing, singing, and rehearsing because we just like to be in each other’s presence. When we sing together, it only brings us closer together,” reflects Douglas when trying to identify where FLO’s propulsive sonic charm originates from.
Jorja Douglas.
And while Therapy at the Club is as effortlessly danceable a release as should be expected from FLO, the album also feels like a testament of their maturity – both as individuals and a collective. The record’s tone oscillates between liberation and rumination, heartache to revelation, from a fuck it (!) attitude to a fuck this one just as easily: “Everybody, including us, needs a form of therapy. The whole point of Therapy at the Club is that there’s a song on it for everyone and anyone to resonate with.”
And with this maturity and refined sensitivity, clarity for the direction that the award-winning formula of FLO can take their sound has also crystallized. Now that Quaresma, Douglas, and Downer have proven themselves a force to be reckoned with, their appetite for excellence only continues to grow.
Stella Quaresma.
“We want to be not only the future of girl groups, but the future of music, female music, global music – just the biggest girl group to have ever existed,” FLO declares in unison. “This is what we want to do, and also what inspires us to continue making music that we love to perform, music that makes people feel amazing, and music that makes us feel amazing.”
With Therapy at the Club out in the world, it will almost certainly be but a matter of time before the fierceness of FLO will proliferate beyond genre boundaries. With an abundance of playfulness, a diva sensibility as raucous as it is essential, and a confidence that’s impossible not to find contagious, FLO is on their way to a calibre of pop superstardom arguably unseen since the aughts.
“Pop music is vital to the world. We want to be a part of the driving force behind how pop sounds in the future,” says FLO. If this is what therapy sounds like, count us in.
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