Florist: Florist Album Review | Pitchfork

It’s a reminder that Florist has at all times been a collaborative effort, a delicate group of musicians all equally in tune with the small wonders and moments of connection and disruption Sprague evokes within the lyrics. In these songs, you’ll be able to hear how their elevated intimacy allowed them to find refined new textures that conjure these emotions—say, the layered horns in “Spring in Hours,” or the slide guitar in “Feathers.” Listening to the instrumental tracks, just like the fingerpicked “Duet for Guitar and Rain,” you achieve perception into how they might have landed on these sounds—momentary bursts of inspiration, collected like seashells on a seashore.

After all, not one of the instrumental tracks could be almost as fascinating if the extra conventional songs weren’t among the many strongest Sprague has written. After the stark evocation of grief on 2019’s Emily Alone—a tragic and singular peak in her catalog, written and recorded in isolation after the demise of her mom—these songs proceed a story of loss and restoration, a tentative dawn after a protracted, sleepless evening. Within the wake of these songs that explored Sprague’s relationship together with her mom, “Pink Hen Pt. 2 (Morning)” is a shocking, clear-eyed invocation of her father’s vantage: his reminiscences of driving to the hospital on the evening she was born, serving to construct the home the place she grew up, and carrying the load of grief alongside her within the current day.

Sprague has at all times been preternaturally geared up to ship these autobiographical tales whereas sustaining a unifying, zoomed-out perspective, the place every “you” and “I” slowly assume a cosmic type. This worldview varieties an nearly psychedelic throughline in her work, slowing down time—each drop of rain, every passing thought—in order that she will higher perceive its full trajectory. The lyrics on Florist are crammed with deaths and reincarnations: listening to her mom by the birdsong in “Pink Hen Pt. 2 (Morning),” or the portrait of herself in “Dandelion” as a withering plant within the backyard of her residence. (After recording the music in Florist, Sprague moved to the Catskills, the place she grew up—a kind of homecoming that many of those songs seek for.)

As a result of the interludes outnumber the precise songs, it’s troublesome to name this Florist’s most accessible album, however it’s actually their most bodily. Had the tracklist been condensed, you may hear an awesome album by a deeply in-tune band recording within the woods. As an alternative, you get to discover every of these parts: the band members convening, the songs falling into place, the woods themselves. It’s finest skilled as an entire, however some tracks stand on their very own. “Sci-Fi Silence” begins with a buzzing synth, then fades into a mild folks tune and slowly builds into an anthem, centered on a single phrase. “You’re not what I’ve however what I like,” Sprague and her bandmates sing collectively, again and again. It’s the kind of distinction she has spent her profession exploring. On Florist, they fill the area between: a dwelling doc of what mattered most and what’s nonetheless flickering within the evening.