{"id":12977,"date":"2025-06-04T14:10:32","date_gmt":"2025-06-04T12:10:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ponderosa.it\/?post_type=artisti&p=12977"},"modified":"2025-06-04T14:10:34","modified_gmt":"2025-06-04T12:10:34","slug":"florist","status":"publish","type":"artisti","link":"https:\/\/ponderosa.it\/en\/artist\/florist\/","title":{"rendered":"Florist"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Florist<\/em> feels like the culmination of a decade-long journey, their fourth full-length album, but the first deserving of a self-titled designation. \u201cWe called it Florist because this is not just my songs with a backing band,<\/em>\u201d Sprague explains. \u201cIt\u2019s a practice. It\u2019s a collaboration. It\u2019s our one life. These are my best friends and the music is the way that it is because of that.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Florist is Emily Sprague<\/strong>, Jonnie Baker<\/strong>, Rick Spataro<\/strong> and Felix Walworth<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Florist<\/em> arrives just after the cap of a winding journey. In 2017, shortly after the release of the band\u2019s sophomore record, If Blue Could Be Happiness<\/em>, Sprague sequestered herself in Los Angeles, thousands of miles away from friends and family, and from the physical void and spiritual crisis left in the wake of her mother\u2019s death. There, she took up surfing and released Emily Alone<\/em>, which was essentially a solo album released under the Florist moniker. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Only after months of self reflection and therapy did Sprague realize that life in a silo is no way to live. That a life directed by fear is not much of a life. \u201cThe trauma response to losing my best friend, my mom, was to feel really afraid to get close to anybody ever again,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s sort of cheesy, but I realized that life is better when you share it. The answer isn\u2019t to isolate yourself and be alone.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So she began writing Emily Alone\u2019s companion, the other side of the binary, a record that rings distinctly of Sprague\u2019s tender and poetic spirit, filled with nature and wonder and tears, but without all the loneliness and seclusion. She also adopted a dog, who, she says, \u201ccompletely changed my life.\u201d \u201cMy mind just started exploding with all these thoughts about what it means to live with others, and live with love and care collaboration.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then, for all of June of 2019, amid a hot and rainy summer, 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. \u201cIn the past we\u2019d meet up for a couple of days, or one day here and there,\u201d Spague recalls. \u201cLiving 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.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They set up their gear on the screened-in front porch, which looked out onto a canopy of trees, allowing the sounds of nature to play a leading role throughout. Then, they experimented. The production and recording of the album directly reflects the organic ways in which the band worked that month, with whispering voices, crickets, rain and birds accenting the aleatoric quality of the instrumentation, each player drawing from the communal energy of the woods and their interpersonal bonds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The quartet played through muggy days and breezy nights, and often impromptu. \u201cIn between working on songs specifically, somebody would be sitting on the porch playing a little instrumental piece, and somebody else would be in the kitchen making dinner and stop, and go to the porch and pick up a random instrument,\u201d Sprague explains. These creative bursts became the album\u2019s ambient instrumental bridges, like \u201cVariation\u201d and \u201cJonnie on the Porch,\u201d gentle moments that portray their life together in that particular moment. The bells heard throughout the album are from a collection housed in the rental, the animals were their neighbors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After making the record they always knew they could, together, as one, Sprague could no longer live on the west coast without her band and blood. So, she returned home. Last year, she moved back to The Catskills to be closer to her father and her creative collaborators. She misses surfing, but finds peace in the area\u2019s natural landscapes, and through a strengthening sense of physical reconnection. \u201cA goal is to share the band\u2019s connectedness and relationship, but also how we\u2019re all connected,\u201d she says. With Florist<\/em>, Emily is no longer alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Florist has toured Europe extensively, selling out headlines such as London EartH Theatre, Beyond The Pale Festival, Maifeld Derby, Bad Bonn, BERGHAIN Kantine, Le Hasard Ludique & Roskilde Festival.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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