New York minimalist folk outfit Florist have played a number of noteworthy shows in the City of Brotherly Love and Sisterly Affection. The summer of 2023 had them double-headlining Underground Arts with Skullcrusher and the previous summer saw them headlining The Lounge and World Café Live. They’ve also played PhilaMOCA and an exceptionally memorable house show in West Philly, which they told me about when we chatted in August of 2022: “It was a Drexel house, party vibes, second show of the tour, hundreds of kids, four floors and a basement. We made like $200 and I could not believe it!”
At the time, Florist had recently released their self-titled fourth album, their most sprawling and collaborative yet. Earlier this month, the band released follow-up LP Jellywish, courtesy of longtime home Double Double Whammy. And this coming Monday, May 5th, the band will kick off the Jellywish Tour right here at Johnny Brenda’s. Last week I got a chance to catch up with Florist singer, guitarist, and principal songwriter Emily Sprague, who talked to me about the evolution of Florist throughout the last 10 years.
*Interview has been slightly edited for length and clarity.
Izzy Cihak: This is a big question but, the last time we spoke was in August of 2022, shortly after the self-titled album dropped and as you were in the middle of your first full US tour as a full four-piece. What have been some of the highlights of Florist in the past three-ish years? In addition to doing a follow-up album, you’ve done a ton of touring.
Emily Sprague: That’s an awesome question! We’ve always been in and out of different configurations of the four of us before that, but making Florist — the self-titled record, and titling it that — was all of us kind of saying, “Let’s give this a shot and see if all four of us commit to the way that we play together as a band and the ways that we collaborate,” that being all the different ways Florist can look and sound. It felt like the beginning of a new era for us.
We did five or six months of touring that year and in 2023. We’re approaching ten years as a band, but it was those two years that we really were like, “Wow! We play together in this certain way! The more we play, the better we will be at responding to each other and then feeling the history of knowing each other as people and having played together for so long.”
It all started to feel like we were really honing in on how that live performance can be about us really locking in and playing together. After the self-titled and Jellywish — which, in its own way, is kind of a celebration of the band and how the four of us play together – I think, moving forward, Florist is gonna have new music that is just gonna have more reinforcing that. We’ve gotten a lot closer, and we’ve gotten a lot tighter as a band, so it’s all good outcomes, I would say.
Izzy: You did just release Jellywish. How do you feel like the new album compares to the self-titled album? I know that you said that last album felt more collaborative and more like a band than previous albums. How has that evolved over the course of the next record?
Emily: The way that I look at the timeline of Florist is the self-titled record was the end of one chapter and the beginning of another, which is the much more collaborative kind of thing with the band. To me, there are so many different ways to say something with music. There are so many different sides of us as musicians that we want to show.
We want to make music for as long as we can and hopefully there will be many more Florist records that can explore different ways of using music to communicate how we’re feeling or what we’re thinking about. So, in a way, the two records feel like they’re related in a sense that they’re showing different sides of us and different things that we’re interested in and, at the same time, trying to come back to the end mission statement of Florist, which has always been about vulnerability and feelings and thinking differently about things and being present in your body and mind and stuff. So, I feel like they’re very different in their presentation of what an album can be. One is long and kind of meandering and needs a little bit more patience, maybe, and one is a bit of a blink [laughs].
Izzy: I know this album had sort of a lot of non-musical influences, just related to things that we kind of deal with as humans on Earth, so I’m curious if there were any particular works of art or media that you were into when conceptualizing the album that you either took inspiration from or just helped you sort of think about these things?
Emily: There’s a book – it’s known as one of the first [examples] of automatic writing, surrealist writing – actually called The Magnetic Fields, by André Breton. It’s one of those books that I always have around and flip through to generate thoughts. Surrealism in all the different art mediums — like Darger, visual art, Breton — and the painting style exquisite corpse, when you have this game of creating stream of consciousness art with others, and you use that stream and try to generate your creativity through the collective linking, that was a big part of going into this record, and also trying to take some inspiration from certain kinds of minimalist music. I’m a huge fan of environmental and ambient music. So, I like the idea of music also being able to say a lot, or cover a lot, with very little. In some ways, the arrangements for Jellywish are kind of straightforward. I’ve always liked to have deceptively simple lyrics and stuff, so kind of combining complicateness [laughs] and minimalism.
Izzy: I just realized that you’ve been on Double Double Whammy for a decade now, which I feel like is kinda crazy in this day and age. How is it working with them and being such an established part of that family? They have so many artists I know and love.
Emily: Double Double Whammy and the band kind of started at the same time, so there was always something really, really special about that relationship and this idea that we would grow together. We’ve had a very nice journey with someone who’s in the business, because it’s hard to navigate otherwise. When you have different opportunities throughout the career of a band, it can be hard to decide exactly what way to go. But we’ve always prioritized our relationships with each other and the people that we work with. Everyone we’ve worked with we’ve worked with a for a long time and it’s a very, very small team. We don’t feel super comfortable letting people in [laughs] who aren’t already very, very close with us. So that is what lead to that being 10 years, and we’ll have a 10-year anniversary of Holdly in the fall, which is pretty cool.
Izzy: You’re about to embark on about a month of North American dates, followed by about a month of dates throughout Europe and the UK. I know that artists always say they’re excited for every show, but are there any cities or venues you’re especially excited to visit or revisit?
Emily: I’m always excited for the West Coast US shows; it’s always pretty fun to be out there and to do those. I’m not sure if we’re playing any venues that I’ve never been to in the US, but there’s one show in Europe where we’re playing outside in a park in Amsterdam, so I’m pretty excited for that. And we’re playing a church in London, so there’s some cool venues on that Europe run.
Izzy: What can be expected of the live show on the Jellywish Tour?
Emily: We’re gonna play probably the whole album. And there’s always gonna be some instrumentals and stuff like that at a Florist live show. We tend to take some instrumental intermission breaks, à la the self-titled record. I think it’ll be fun to kind of combine those two, because Jellywish is a bit on the shorter side for a full-length, I think 35 minutes or so, and we usually play for about 50 minutes. We’ve played a couple of shows as we’ve started to get used to running the new material. It’s gonna be fun! I think it’ll be a nice translation to the stage, and we’re all really excited to get to play together. Hopefully we can lock in with each other and have it really be about that, as well.
Izzy: You seem to play a lot of different types of spaces. Even just in Philly, I’ve seen you at The Lounge at World Café Live, like a classics listening room, and Underground Arts, which is like a basement punk and metal club. And I know you’ve played PhilaMOCA and some house shows. So, I’m curious how you like playing barrooms like Johnny Brenda’s, in particular? I’ve never seen you in a place like that before.
Emily: I think that the people who come to Florist shows these days have a lot to do with our ability to adapt to whatever the space. It hasn’t always been this way, but it’s so beautiful it makes me happy. The audience – no matter where we are, like if we’re in a metal bar or if we’re in a church or if we’re at a house show – comes with the intention of having this kind of quiet, safe, peaceful (in a sense), introspective experience. And I think it helps us be able to tap into that when we’re playing. Florist music, a lot of people listen to it when they’re on their own, on a walk, or at home chilling out. To make that into a social experience is actually one of my favorite parts of this at this point, because of how much we can connect with one another in a room and share that. I think the audience has so much to do with that. Our adaptability goes a long way when there’s a crowd that’s just there to listen and share that with everyone else who’s there.
Izzy: You’re going to be on the road with labelmate Allegra Krieger, who I totally love! Her last record was one of my favorites of last year. What are your thoughts on her? Are you excited to spend some time on the road together? I’m kind of assuming you’re friends…
Emily: We toured with Allegra back in November! We did a shorter, off-market, two-week tour. We all got along so well, and she’s got a very DIY mindset, just like we do. We tour very frugally, and she’s down to ride with us. We all share a hotel room and stuff like that. It’s very punk, kind of [laughs], the way that we do everything ourselves on tour, and Allegra’s down with that! We all get along and travel really well together, so we asked her to come back, not just because of that but also because we’re all obsessed with her music [laughs]. Seeing Allegra live is really like remarkably amazing. I can’t stress it enough for people to try to catch Allegra live. She’s a force, she’s one of the best songwriters I’ve ever known, I’ve ever heard. Seeing her play live is a real mindblowing experience. I’m super honored that she wants to come with us and wants to be around us for this long [laughs]. I think it will be just a really amazing pairing for the night. She’ll be playing solo. Allegra is just an awesome person, awesome musician!
Izzy: Finally, what’s next for Florist? How are you hoping and planning to spend the second half of 2025, after your summer dates wrap? I know you were talking about a 10th anniversary.
Emily: Yeah, we might do some special things for that 10th anniversary. Holdly and our first full-length with Double Double Whammy, The Birds Outside Sang, will be 10-year anniversaries back-to-back, so there might be some special things going on for that. We’re also gonna continue to tour a bit into 2026 — some things that haven’t been announced yet — and then I think we’ll probably finish off this album cycle in the summer of 2026, maybe with some festivals and things like that, hopefully both in the US and internationally. We have some new music projects in the works, as well, some Florist recordings we’ve already been working on. So, I’m hoping that we stay busy and have a lot going on in the form of regular touring and working on some new shows, but also some branching out into some different types of ways you can experience Florist’s music.
*Get your tickets here.
