“SOMETIMES THE SENSES ARE ENOUGH”: FLORIST ON A FRIDAY EVENING

by Riley Kirk

This past fall, New York quartet Florist took to the Bottlerocket stage at the tail-end of their fall 2024 tour. Recognized as one of Stereogum’s Best New Bands of 2015 and reviewed multiple times by Pitchfork, Florist has spent the last “decade-long journey of friendship and collaboration” traversing the mountains of ambient folk-pop.

Nestled in the hills of Allentown, Bottlerocket Social Hall exists as a place outside of the concept of time, still comfortably nestled in its history as a 70’s lyceum social hall with dark wood and velvet carpet paneled walls. Similarly, Florist is currently in a magic in-between place release-wise, months after their raved about contribution “Riding Around In The Dark” to the I Saw The TV Glow soundtrack and two years after the release of their self-titled fourth album. Hints at future work– a completed album teased on lead vocalist Emily Sprague’s band Instagram account– were confirmed at the fall show, which featured a setlist confined to no particular era of Florist music, instead highlighting new unreleased
songs.

Neither of the band’s two “claim to fames”- “Thank You”, a spoken-word track sampled in Beyonce’s 2019 Homecoming film, and “Riding Around In The Dark”– are performed, nor the band’s latest released single, “This Was A Gift”. Instead Florist chooses a careful sampling of tracks from the latest album– “Sci-fi Silence”, “Dandelion”, “Red Bird Pt. 2 (Morning)”— and unreleased songs, culminating an evening that welcomed in the most casual listener.

Sprague’s expansive music catalogue, both with the band and under her own name, traces back to 2013 with Florist’s six-track EP We Have Been This Way Forever, marked by her passion for modular synthesizers and ambient music coupled with a soft attention to poetic lyricism and an indie-folk guitar reminiscent of early acoustic Big Thief. However, you don’t need to be a long-time fan to appreciate the unique qualities of each song she brings to the stage, approaching the same topics of love, loss, gratitude, and the kind of staring at your bedroom ceiling you do when you’re seventeen and again when you’re in
your twenties.

Florist begins their set just after 8:30, the four members sitting in a loose C-shape before a room full of people slowly shedding their coats and moving in closer. Felix Walworth balances a synthesizer on a cymbal behind the drum-kit; Rick Sparato and Jonnie Baker sit with respective bass and guitar on either side of Emily Sprague, lead vocalist and lyricist behind Florist. Sprague wears her hair short, with straight, thin bangs dusting the rim of her trademark Windsor-esque glasses and a loose T-shirt depicting the intricacies of the solar system in a faded graphic. (Later, she will stand behind stacks of CDs and T-shirts after the show and quietly thank each person who approaches her, take photos with long-time fans, and execute an endearingly humble Yoda bow after each interaction.)

“For those in the back who can’t see, we are sitting,” Sprague says. Her voice is soft, low, smooth. “Just imagine it. Sometimes senses are enough.”

Thus begins the soft introduction to “Sci-fi Silence”, a 2022 single from Florist. Generally at shows that I am working, I make it a rule of thumb to remain in the front row and keep my eyes on the band out of fear of missing something. However, heeding Sprague’s advice, I slip to the back of the room after a few songs, behind the clusters of people pushed to nearly touch the amplifiers (a remarkable turnout for the social club).

Here I can close my eyes and breathe and sway and listen to the music overlapping the loud drunk chatter behind me. This feels like the way Florist is supposed to be experienced, tarnished by the flaws of real life and the human audience before me. It makes it more beautiful, somehow.

“We’re bringing it down a bit now,” Sprague warns. “Death. Haha.” The audience laughs, which quickly morphs into a sharp universal inhale as the chords to “Dandelion” begin. “It’s the dark that I need from your eyes,” Sprague sings, alluding to the 2017 song “Eyes in the Sun” in which she introduces the running metaphor: “It’s been a while, but I’m not afraid / Of the things that make me feel something big / Like looking at your eyes in the sun / Like looking at your eyes in the dark.”

The concepts of light and dark have been present in Sprague’s lyrics since Florist’s debut EP, which begins with a song literally titled “Dark Light”. In physics, darkness is merely the absence of light; however, Sprague treats the concept as its own entity separate from its obvious contradiction to light.

Darkness is a comfort, a vast night sky that terrifies you, an extinguished streetlamp, a vessel for the stars. Light is divided into what is gold and what is white: white is a harsh hospital, a bright doorway to the other side described by Sprague after being put in the hospital following a near-deadly hit-and-run on her bicycle. Gold is the realization that it was only sunlight in her eyes, “the last thing you’ll ever need.”

“Let this be the beginning of the pathway to being under the covers,” Sprague says before concluding the set, her lyrics washing over the audience like a crisp duvet pulled up to your chin on Christmas Eve in the way that makes you forget how grown-up you are. The show ends before ten, but nobody is unsatisfied, instead quietly eager to shuffle out into the slushy rain and get about an early bedtime on one of Pittsburgh’s first truly chilled Friday evenings of the season.

Florist’s music fills your stomach like a warm bowl of soup, and settles your heart in knowing that you are not alone in whatever it is that makes you weird, makes you a freak, what makes your life worth living.

Riley Kirk is a multimedia creative and journalist. She loves finding inspiration in the DIY scene, music, and this beautiful city. She has published pieces with Grain of Salt Magazine (archived) and the Pittsburgh Independent, all of which you can read from her instagram @noneofusaregoingback.

Listen to Florist on Spotify or Apple Music, and check back for the next concert at Bottlerocket Social Hall.