Photo Credit: Stephanie Griffin
New York based Florist found me in the depths of perhaps my deepest, most sleep deprived NPR Tiny Desk sinkhole (in which one watches so many NPR Tiny Desk videos that one’s sense of reality and desk begin to mesh into a new super-reality of indie music).
You can see how I would be inspired to re-watch this session, and how lead vocalist Emily Sprague would eventually inspire me to exit my trance and buy my very first sweet-red guitar off Craigslist.
I tried and tried to learn the chords to “Vacation,” because something about the line: “For meaningful life and a fun family vacation | Like when I used to ride rollercoasters with my dad | When a swimming pool in a hotel was a gift from God” made me tear up a little. But try as I may, although Emily made the song sound so simple and so sweet, I just couldn’t master it. No worries though, because now I had both a new friend in the coziest of bedroom-pop and a sweet-red guitar.
On Florist’s 2016 release The Birds Outside Sang the song “1914” evokes such powerful nostalgia; phrased just so to produce affinity and send listeners spiraling into memories of past summer loves of their own. It’s just so wildly refreshing to hear an artist singing about commonplace subjects like love and friendship with such honesty and genuine emotion.
On the dedication for The Birds Outside Sang Emily writes: “[ the album ] is […] a rebirth of a musical friendship between my best friends in the whole world, and an attempt to highlight the importance of love and the things in life that give you something special to hold on to, to find a calm that can carry you through being alive and being scared.” It’s in us all to be a little scared, and I’m so glad to have found an artist willing to genuinely depict the arduous process of self-discovery to help me in my own.
Florist is opening for band Why? this upcoming Saturday, which will make an excellent pair. Although I am less familiar with the works of Why?, a shallow delve into their discography produces an alluring array of material ranging from pop to folk-punk to hip-hop and beyond. Why?’s latest release Moh Lhean features both emotional and uplifting tracks, the opening track, specifically, radiating a pop vibe, eventually working the album through a variety of genres to end on “The Barely Blur”, a melancholy piano/guitar track.
You can still buy tickets for this all ages show at Neumos this Saturday, February 24th here.
Keep up with Why? and Florist:
JULIA OLSON | KXSU Head Music Reporter