“Itʼs a portrait of who we are as collaborators, as really long term friends and as extended family as well,” leader Emily Sprague says of her bandʼs new self-titled album. Florist is also the strongest album of the bandʼs decade-long career, an immersive work that conveys the magic of the earth and of family, and the whole of the bandʼs heart.
For all of June of 2019, amid a hot and rainy summer, Emily Sprague (guitar, synth, vocals), Jonnie Baker (guitar, synth, sampling, bass, saxophone, vocals), Rick Spataro (bass, piano, synth, vocals) and Felix Walworth (percussion, synth, guitar, vocals) convened in a rented house in the Hudson Valley, to live and work together. It was the first time the quartet recorded that way, and for that long. “In the past weʼd meet up for a couple of days, or one day here and there,” Spague recalls. “Living together for a month is a really big part of why the arrangements are the way they are, and also why the instrumentals are such a huge part of the record.”
The result is 19 tracks that feel like the culmination of a decade-long journey, their fourth full-length album, but the first deserving of a self-titled designation. “We called it Florist because this is not just my songs with a backing band,” Sprague explains. “Itʼs a practice. Itʼs a collaboration. Itʼs our one life. These are my best friends and the music is the way that it is because of that.”