Video: Florist, ‘M’

Kevin Bronson on July 25th, 2019

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Florist is the name under which singer-songwriter Emily Sprague releases her minimalist pop — which, on this album suggests, is truly “Emily Alone.”

Yes, the album is a quiet, meditative affair, as Sprague shares the reflections and revelations she recorded during 2018’s rainy season in her new home. She had moved from New York to Los Angeles the year before, which inspired deep bouts of introspection. Her unassumingly sung tunes worm their way into your psyche; in that way, Florist has a penchant for turning “Emily, Alone” into You, Alone.

Not that the solitary life perfectly suited a songwriter from the Catskill Mountains who started Florist as a collaborative project. “These are days like the deepest caves / You would never dare to descend into / And truthfully silence never / Did it for me,” she sings on “Time Is a Dark Feeling.” On another of the album’s highlights, “Shadow Bloom,” she confides, “You spend your life trying to find / Secrets from the last time you felt alright / Loneliness is only the last flower to be picked.”

Director V. Haddad’s video for the song “M” weaves in two previously unreleased ambient pieces and an old vocal sample of her mother singing as it follows the singer-songwriter into the wilderness, where she cradles an orb that, like her songs, seems to have a magical glow.

“Emily, Alone” is out Friday.

||| Watch: The video for “M”