Emily Sprague has no trouble baring her soul out in her lyrics. Intimacy, like tenderness, has and never will be a difficult thing for the Florist enterprise, or “friendship project,” as they call it, which includes Rick Spataro, Jonnie Baker, and Felix Walworth. The challenge, bigger than ever on their first album since their resplendent 2022 self-titled effort, is sounding at peace with a world hurtling towards catastrophe; staying soft, friendly, and curious when grief continues to bear its mark on you. But the music can also only be as delicate as the line between the threads of consciousness Sprague bounces between – waking, altered, existential – thin enough to let light slip through yet expansive enough to get lost in. For all its quiet optimism and awe, Jellywish is never quite restful or easygoing; much in the same way that, for all its introspection, it never truly stands alone.
1. Levitate
Just as the acoustic fingerpicking begins its ascent, it touches back down, avoiding the suffocating melancholy of something like Daughter’s ‘Smother’. Emily Sprague’s singing is instantly mesmerizing, erasing the gap between “wake/wait” like she’s making up another word, as if the album title is just the start. She attempts to reconcile personal pleasure with the immeasurable tragedy around her, to find a footing amidst the imbalance, the simple proof of life. She recognizes godlike desire – “the pulse between two mouths” – yet craves an impossible intimacy – “the power of love doesn’t seem to come.” Still, she’d keep looking, treasuring the in-between, for the rest of her life.
2. Have Heaven
With the band counting through each repetition of the chorus, the heightened playfulness of Jellywish shines through on ‘Have Heaven’, even as it acknowledges the album’s environmental concerns. “Does it feel like everything is melting here? Are we giving up now?” Sprague wonders, yet it sounds like the band is just now waking to life, anchoring in gentle percussion and ambience to carve a path forward.
3. Jellyfish
Jellyfish always seem a little alien, and the album’s quasi-title track invites us to look at the more familiar things in life from a similar perspective. Take nothing for granted, it seems to argue, with the one exception that makes the whole band pause: “Nothing is guaranteed but death.” But it’s not a full stop; Sprague’s introspection fills out a few more lines, finally landing on a more empowering declaration: “Destroy the feeling you are not enough.”
4. Started to Glow
Imagine freezing in the cold and thinking up a line like “the ice looks like a beautiful face staring up.” ‘Started to Glow’ is a reminder that few bands as pervasively existentialist as Florist create such vividly inviting music. Over strummed chords, subtle atmospherics, and Rick Spataro’s featherlight piano, they make contemplating mortality sound like daydreaming, or an actual dream lingering over your morning ritual. “It doesn’t feel like the end,” she sings, but it’s all a blur, and it’s always coming.
5. This Was a Gift
Right in the middle of the album is a song with a bit more spring in its step, spiked by electric guitar. The tone suits one of the album’s most potent lines, “Only the dead survive,” which Sprague repeats before shifting her attention to the living: “Only the home I have is with you in mind.” Then the “you” becomes more concrete, evidenced by the group’s vibrant performances: “I just want music in my life/ I just want us to sing along.” The reassuring “I’m your guy” would sound at home on every song on the record, but instead she repeats it ten times here, driving the point all the way home.
6. All the Same Light
Florist slightly digitize and distort their typically organic sound, puncturing the surface of this otherwise hushed acoustic ballad. “It’s funny that the start is what shows us to the end and the end is all I am,” Sprague sings, and you’re not quite sure how the song, too, expands from point A to point B. But it’s something to behold.
7. Sparkle Song
As Sprague zooms in on moments of quiet domesticity and love, her feelings seem to determine the sun’s disposition as much as the other way round: “Today the sun is hiding,” “Today the sun is shining.” Even though she still worries about the future, the sparser, cleaner arrangement suggests we’ve passed some sort of spiritual clearing. “How can you be in this reality?” she sings, bemused by this person’s happiness, yet palpably tied to it, the smile in her voice betraying a we.
8. Moon, Sea, Devil
Maybe it’s not the intimacy itselfthat’s so impossible – maybe it’s timing. Maybe succeeding, getting what you want, isn’t about manufacturing but rather succumbing to it – the ineffable concurrence of earthly and supernatural forces. “I want to be family with you,” Sprague admits, “So that means I give it up to the chaos.” The earth is small, she posits, and the song feels like that too; but look how far it can take you, and keep you, restlessly, in awe.
9. Our Hearts in a Room
Jellyfish is tirelessly introverted, but the collective is always hanging above its surface, and finally materializes vocally here with Felix Walworth harmonizing. “Is this all you’ve ever wanted/ Is it all you believe is true/ Is it all our dreams colliding and is that you,” they sing, like believing together can bring reality a little closer.
10. Gloom Designs
The closing track sounds as peaceful as anything else on Jellywish, yet alarms us with a hint of weariness: “Honestly I’m getting kinda sick of talking about this,” she intimates, meaning everything. She doesn’t let the song end there, of course – instead she copes by tripping out, a bit of self-indulgence, a bit of self-neglect. She allows the music to get weirder, threading in samples that attest to life’s randomness. Then she puts everything back into perspective. “It’s been a long time since we laughed until we cried/ It’s been a short time in the entirety of life/ I want to know what exists between the veils/ Make some sounds that no one wants to hear,” she concludes. Maybe none of these sounds made it onto Jellywish – all of it, though, is worth your time.
