In the hours before they’ll take the stage of Pioneer Works, on a Thursday in December, the four members of Florist—multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Emily Sprague, guitarist Jonnie Baker, bassist Rick Spataro, and percussionist Felix Walworth—are sitting backstage, contemplating darkness. That weekend, the space would also host the operatic noise of Lingua Ignota and the colossal doom metal of Sunn O))). Despite the group’s comparably gentler sounds, it’s fitting to consider Florist’s cracked-open ambient-folk within the context of that extremity and intensity. “A lot of aspects to our songs are pretty or poppy or major or folky,” says Sprague. “They're pleasing to listen to. But that is paired with something that is, I think, hopefully, more complicated.”

Since 2013, and across four full-length records beaming with light and space, Florist’s songs have also borne the weight of death and grief and existence. To make their new record—a 19-track self-titled collage of songs, synthesizers, found sounds, and improvisations—the group moved into a rented house near their hometown of Catskill, New York. Florist captures their songwriting as much as their collaborative process—one they brought to the Main Hall just after we spoke.

On "Organ's Drone," from the new record, you repeat these two lines, "I think I'm alive" and "Do not say goodbye." These two sentiments, together, kind of feel like an emotional center to the record.

"Organ's Drone" is about when you start feeling your literal organs working inside your body. That awareness can become this sort of anxiety spiral into your own mortality. The song is really rooted in that feeling: okay, everything's still working, I can feel it working, but it could stop at any moment. And maybe it will in the next second, and you're just like, I'm alive, I'm alive. The idea of saying goodbye is something that I feel is tied too much to our earthly existence. It's a way of thinking that I like to try and move away from. I do not believe that we are really different from anything we see around us. So there's a lot of subtext. I really like simplicity in lyrics, and economy of words.

You’ve said that "Dandelion" was inspired by the spirit of Emily Dickinson. What does that mean to you?

Oh, did I say that?

It's in your press bio, actually.

[Laughter]

I have no memory of that. What I do know about Emily Dickinson is that she was extremely agoraphobic, introverted, had a morbid fascination with life, and had a hard experience in her time period. "Dandelion" is definitely the most suffering-embodied song on the record. It's supposed to maintain a breaking point all throughout, past a point of no return. But there’s also a sense of calmness to it. When I read Emily Dickinson, she's surprisingly calm.

Are there any other literary influences for you on this record?

Anne Carson is and will always be one of my favorite poets. I like people who write very plainly and are confusing and able to hold a lot of complexity in an almost minimalistic kind of way.

Were there any works in mediums other than music that impacted any of you this year?

I've been playing this video game called Disco Elysium. It's set in an earth-like place where there's a conflict between a union and a logistics company. And you are an alcoholic detective who has lost his short- and long-term memory and is supposed to solve a murder. And you are learning about communism through learning about yourself.

That weirdly segues well into a question I wanted to ask about the making of the most recent record.

That was also learning about communism by learning about ourselves.

The last record, from 2019, Emily Alone, was made by Emily solo, whereas this new record seems very much a celebration of collaboration and interconnectedness. Florist seems like a group who has really thought about what it means to be a group. What do you feel like you have learned as artists in the negotiation between isolation and collaboration?

Just deepening the amount that I trust people. It feels very hard to come by. I feel grateful to have anyone that I trust in this sort of way.

The relationships that the four of us have are well past family. They're borderline romantic partnership level. I think it's rooted in this trust and respect for each other. At least for me, I don't have this kind of relationship ever, with anybody. I barely have any friends. It's so valuable. I can't even explain it. It's this super glue. It's gorilla glue. The most extreme expensive kind of gorilla glue, where you're like, do I really need it to be that much more extra strongly bonded? It's actually inescapable in a way. Sometimes I feel trapped, but that's also part of it. I think you have to feel that to then come back to that point of being like, this is what I choose for my life. I want this.

Throughout the pandemic I've been thinking a lot about isolation versus collectivism, and just what the day-to-day of being a musician has looked like over the past few years. At the beginning, I was thinking, oh, I'm on unemployment, I have all this time, I'm going to write all of these songs, maybe I'll even play some of these live stream shows. At that time, we had just recorded the new record in 2019, and it was this amazing experience of writing and coming up with ideas together. It was incredibly collaborative and very fulfilling. And in isolation, the pleasure of it was suddenly taken away. I was like, I'm not interested in this. I started to realize that one of the things that draws me to art, or maybe the thing, is connecting with people—being able to sit down with a bunch of people and lose sight of where an idea came from, because you can't pinpoint the center of it, and you're no longer responsible for the origin of the thing. You're just responsible for the continuing volley. That's so different from staring at a blank page, with no one, and you're the only one who has to care.

You have all been kind of pushing yourselves creatively in different directions the past few years. I’m especially thinking about you, Emily, and the modular synth music you’ve been making. Do you think that has seeped into Florist? This newest record is so textural, and there are songs, but there are also parts that aren’t songs. I was wondering if your relationship with the concept of a song has changed.

My exploration of instrumental music helped deconstruct song structure for me in a way that I really love. I think on Emily Alone it's really present. It's definitely in this record too. I don't really believe in form. If it feels right, then that's what the song should be; it doesn't necessarily have to have a standard arc. But in talking about our new record, I've noticed that comparison comes up a lot, between my solo instrumental music and the instrumental music on the new record. And I have been wanting to say, for the record, that I made none of those instrumentals myself. It's mainly Jonnie and Rick. I think instrumental music and experimental music and synth music have always been an aspect of our sounds and our ways of playing. One of the first things we ever did together, when we were first hanging out, was eating a bunch of mushrooms and  playing a Moog synthesizer.

When I started making music on modular synths and electronic instruments, it definitely unlocked my brain in a way. I realized, music doesn't need to follow some kind of formula. It doesn't even have to be in tune. It really just is an expression. And that, for me, was informed by years of dancing around that idea with our arrangements in Florist. When we get together playing music for fun, it's very much like that. When we were recording this record, I think we just really felt like, why not include that? Why would we hold this stuff back or keep it in the hard drives?

It's definitely something we've always done. One of the instrumentals on the first EP is the three of us playing one harmonium together, with six hands. And then it's, like, filtered and destroyed.  For the new record, we would be working on a song during the day. And then we would just be making dinner, hanging out at night. Maybe someone would be working on stuff by themselves, but we would start improvising and recording, making sure the tape wasn't on top of something we needed. So there's all these cuts, where it's just like one thing on the tape to the next thing to the next thing, and it's just whatever is on there. We would even listen back and sometimes be like, what is that? When did that happen? That’s what it sounds like: just documenting the moods and flow of being together.

I was thinking about this Pauline Oliveros quote, where she talks about how improvised music is a good model for community building, and how people who listen together learn and expand together. When you listen to this album, you really hear the sound of a group of people making music together.

There's the specificity of the group, which is something that's very special about working together. I love that there can be a Florist record that Emily makes completely by herself, and then there can be one that we make incredibly collaboratively. This is a somewhat modular system that we have. Sometimes someone can't make it. Sometimes two members break up with each other and can't play in the same band for a while. But there's never anyone else. I've been thinking about that in the context of this sort of general band structure in the indie world that I see these days. There's this sort of anonymity to the players... I think it also has to do with marketing and the industry and what the industry is pushing around songwriters specifically. It just feels special to be a group of people who are Florist.

The economics of the music world are squeezing artists to think of themselves more as individualistic content creators. It does feel like there's more of a need to fight for the sort of sacred space of group collaboration even when it’s hard.

We couldn't dispose of each other if we tried to. And we have tried.

[Laughter]

It's very reassuring to me that it's not always pleasant. And I think that has to be part of this. We're not just having a great time—we are sometimes—but it's not like we have this bond, and everything is great. It's a whole fucking mess. To be a person. But it's special to me because it's hard to find someone who will do that with you. And so to have found three people seems like unbelievable odds.

I'm a really, really introverted person. I love being alone. I like doing things by myself. But I really have no interest in being on this journey solo, if that were ever on the table. It's not even something I've ever thought about. Like the idea of even being here today, and there being 400 people that bought tickets, is just awful to me. I am truly, totally just disgusted by that. I love making music. I believe in music. Music is the accessible art that everyone in the world gets to have. But [needing to have an] alternate-ego-personality-whatever [version] of myself is outside of my comfort zone. You know, having my picture on the internet. I really hate that stuff. And I couldn't do it if we weren't doing this together. The support system really makes this bearable. Because I believe in sharing our music, and I really want to do that. Art should be accessible, and the project makes that possible in a way.

Also, thanks so much to everybody who bought tickets.

Do you regularly think about the big picture with music, like what it means to make music in the world? Or why music is the thing you're doing?

I think about it all the time. It's the only way that I feel like I can truly express myself. It feels like a language. I struggle so much to communicate verbally, or even to just have conversations with people. It's always been really hard. Nothing has ever come close to the way that music has let me explain or express myself.

And then also, what I said just before: art just needs to be a part of life. It is a part of life. It shouldn't really cost money. It shouldn't be something that some people get and some people don't. It's just like exercise or eating well or hugging your pets. It's an integral part of life that is necessary for survival. And I don't mean highbrow capital ‘A’ art. It's singing happy birthday with your family, and dancing, or making a card for somebody, or going outside and being present and thinking about the way that our world is constructed. I really do feel like music is the most beautiful, accessible version of that in everyday life. You can contribute to that. I really want to spend my energy contributing to that in a positive way that is for life, and for music as therapy, as part of our existence and brains.

An idea I heard once is to think of music not as something that you make, but as human behavior. Because if it’s something you make, then some people can make it, and some people can't. You have to learn how to make that sort of thing. But thinking of it rather as human behavior, it’s just a part of living as much as anything else is. It's laced right in there. And I think there are ways that it's structured—buying tickets to go see a show—that sort of make it seem like, oh, this is music, and then the thing we do at home is not music. I want to think of it as behavior, and I think everyone can do that if they want to.

When I was 10, I was playing the first Animal Crossing game, which is mostly about collecting resources and paying debt and working for a raccoon man. And I was really interested in that aspect of it—paying the money that I owed to the raccoon, and doing that efficiently and diligently. But there is another part of the game where on Saturday nights, this dog would show up in town. It would sit down on a stool and play acoustic guitar in the town square. And I was playing late one Saturday evening in 2002. If you go and stand next to the dog, he'll perform for you, and the screen will change. It'll just be a black background and a spotlight on the dog as he sings a song. And I remember having this feeling that what I was doing by listening to this dog was the most important thing in the world. I can’t exactly explain it. It was a very vague feeling. It was like the presence of God or something. It was sublime. And I was like, I'm going to dedicate my life to this. In some way, maybe that's why it's music for me. Why is it music and not something else? I think it mostly has to do with contact with people. I think the event, the moment that you can share, is fleeting and life affirming and potentially galvanizing. Whether it was me as a kid going to punk shows in the city, or me as a kid watching the dog, it's this moment where you can just be switched.

We've clearly not been too concerned with paying the raccoon and more concerned with watching the dog.

Perhaps overly concerned.

The raccoon keeps calling me though.

This band very much came out of DIY scenes, from the very beginning in Albany, playing house shows, to moving to New York, and only really being a part of an underground. That's everything for us. It's everything that we've done, and it's everyone that we've met and shared that time and space with. We owe a lot to community, and starting from an alternative perspective, of doing whatever you can to be with people, and making it up as you go along. And trying to do the impossible, basically. ♦