Florist

with Allegra Krieger

and Small Sur

“It’s 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 band’s new self-titled album. Florist is also the strongest album of the band’s decade-long career, an immersive work that conveys the magic of the earth and of family, and the whole of the band’s heart. It arrives just after the cap of a winding journey. In 2017, shortly after the release of the band’s sophomore record, If Blue Could Be Happiness, 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’s death. There, she took up surfing and released Emily Alone, which was essentially a solo album released under the Florist moniker. 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. “The trauma response to losing my best friend, my mom, was to feel really afraid to get close to anybody ever again,” she says. “It’s sort of cheesy, but I realized that life is better when you share it. The answer isn’t to isolate yourself and be alone.”