The lights of the stage reflected in the small star-shaped stickers on lead singer Inayah El-Amin’s bass as she said to the crowd that had gathered, “If you can hear me clap once.”
Twin Cities-based band SoulFlower performed songs from their new EP “SETLIST” at local venue Icehouse on Friday night. The EP honored their many live performances since forming the band last year during the summer.
Opening for Minneapolis band Dial Tone, SoulFlower has been working towards live performances since August 2023. El-Amin said the band came together naturally, meeting through mutual friends and gravitating towards playing together.
“We didn’t really have to, like, control it because it was just flowing in a direction of us playing together,” El-Amin said. “We have moments all the time just talking about how we’re grateful about that and how we love playing with each other and looking forward to growing and all the rest of it.”
Their songwriting process stems from their natural dynamic, forming piece by piece. Often a song will start as a melodic riff from their guitarists Victor Wedden and Matt Greene, or Ezekiel Cowan developing a beat on the drums.
El-Amin described it as a natural process, and said, “Usually, we’re jammin’, and we are coming up with something that feels and sounds really good to us. And we just loop it, basically. Then we build the song from there.”
The band has played numerous shows at local and house venues alike since forming. A favorite performance of Wedden’s was their first show together.
“I was super anxious before, but I felt like we kind of played together really well,” Wedden said.
“You know what show I really liked was when we got (Ezekiel) back after I, like, covered for the drums that one day,” Greene, also known as Freakwhensee, said. “I don’t even know if that venue still exists but it was a super fun show, like some dramatic curtain openings and stuff.”
After playing together for a little over a year, SoulFlower decided it was time to produce their first EP, “SETLIST.” The album was created as an ode to their time performing live shows, each song on the EP they played prior to its release on Oct. 24.
“It was named that because we were playing all those songs for the last, like, year at live shows,” El-Amin said. “Those songs really did exist more in live venues longer than they have been out.”
Produced and recorded locally, the band wanted to bring it back to the live shows and the time the songs were written to honor how far they had come since last summer. It took ten months to mix and record songs before releasing it in October.
Having performed at Icehouse previously, it was special to come back for another performance after the release of their EP. The community of the venue and concert-goers felt like a homecoming show, as friends, fans and family waved to the band from the crowd.
