Florist

Album review

The third album from Florist picks up where the band's second, 2017's If Blue Could Be Happiness, left off. That record closed out with "Red Bird," a demo that singer-songwriter Emily Sprague played for her mother the day before the older woman died. The follow-up, "Red Bird Pt. 2 (Morning)," appears here. Recorded on a screened-in porch in the summer, you can actually hear birds singing along as Sprague reckons with how the world keeps going after you've lost someone dear. "How can it be that the days go on/ And the red bird sings its red bird song?/ It happened to us and it's happened before/ And it happens all the same," she sings. It's fatalistic, but tender and honest, in keeping with Sprague's lyrical nature. As gentle and thought-provoking as elder songwriting peers Rebecca Gates and Phil Elverum, her style is completely evocative. At not yet 30, Sprague has been through some trying times—from losing a parent to being hit by a bus at age 19. "I was sure that I was going to die, and then I didn't," she once said in an interview. "It changed the way I thought about being alive." For one thing, she has baldly embraced magic, saying it is "just energy." On "Two Ways," she sings: "Energy you come through me/ When I don't know where you come from/ Family, don't let me go/ To the place I don't want to come back from." It's as if, among the darkness that has occurred in her life, she retains the optimism of magic without getting too deep into it; the song just ends abruptly, no fade out, rather like life can. "Organ's Drone," meanwhile, feels completely alive. "Too much on my mind/ Take me, show me all the things that I have never known," Sprague pleads before a chorus of voices come together for a chant of "Do not say goodbye"—a community gathering around her. Florist's porch pop is as intimate as the bedroom variety, but includes intriguing, uncontrollable background sounds: Those aforementioned birds, as well as nature's nocturnal chirps on "June 9th Nighttime" and the white-noise rain of instrumental track "Duet for Guitar and Rain." Brief interstitials set the mood, while full-length lyrics embrace the landscape. "Starlight over California skies/ Driving through the night to find out/ Whether to follow that dark," Sprague sings, alongside jazzy bass and groovy drums, on "43." The guitar sounds wounded, hitting off notes but skittering back to its footing. "There is no growing without all the painful things," she echoes. In between the new and last Florist album, Sprague made the solo Emily Alone, exploring the "trauma response" to her mom's death. "The answer isn't to isolate yourself and be alone," she said. You can feel that on "River's Bed," which is at once pretty and twisted; looming over the gentle campfire melody is a massive wave of synth, like an alien ship hovering. It could be scary, or it could be hope for a new adventure. © Shelly Ridenour/Qobuz