Florist

Florist formed around the vulnerable songwriting of multi-instrumentalist Emily Sprague. Balancing spare intimacy and textured reflection, Florist’s tranquil version of lo-fi first appeared in 2013 on the EP We Have Been This Way Forever. The group’s critically well-received full-length debut, The Birds Outside Sang, saw release in 2016. Titled Emily Alone, Florist’s third album was a grief-inspired solo effort by Sprague released in 2019. She got back together with the band for 2022′s nature-suffused Florist.
Sprague recorded her first Florist EP, 2013′s We Have Been This Way Forever, in her native upstate New York with guitarist Jonnie Baker and bass player Rick Spataro. A split cassette with Eskimeaux (6 Days of Songs) followed in 2014. By that time based in New York City and collaborating with likewise introspective indie acts like Bellows and Told Slant, Florist then signed with Double Double Whammy, which released the EP Holdly in 2015.
After adding drummer Felix Walworth (Told Slant) to the official lineup, the quartet released their full-length debut, The Birds Outside Sang, in 2016. It landed on a handful of indie music magazine year-end lists as well as among The New York Times music editors’ picks for best of the year. Florist followed it in mid-2017 with If Blue Could Be Happiness, also on Double Double Whammy.
In the meantime, personal ordeals including a breakup and the death of her mother prompted a move to Los Angeles for Sprague, who begin recording material at home on her own. She released the ambient synth album Water Memory as Emily A. Sprague in December 2017. The follow-up, Mount Vision, arrived in September 2018. Returning to songwriting and Florist, when logistics prevented bandmates from contributing, she recorded the third Florist LP on her own. Double Double Whammy issued the resulting Emily Alone in mid-2019.
By the time of that album’s release, Sprague had moved back to New York, and she and Baker, Spataro, and Walworth had rented a house in the Hudson Valley to track the project’s next album. Recorded mostly in the home’s screened-in front porch, with nature sounds not only permitted but encouraged, the communal Florist LP arrived on Double Double Whammy in mid-2022. ~ Marcy Donelson