#jellywish

[jellywish]

Homelander

[forestfeeling]

Lovely, existential album <3

[diz-cover]

Florist Jellywish 2025

[mesillusionssousecstasy]

LISBOA MMXX

(© Sous Ecstasy)

[mon-nid]

[dustedmagazine]

Florist — Jellywish (Double Double Whammy)

Photo by V Haddad

Florist’s last full-length, 2022’s self-titled, was a gorgeous, sprawling record of 19 tracks that stretched out to nearly an hour. The album felt like a band reevaluating what it means to make music together, interspersing their usual chiming, intimate folk tunes with warbling, exploratory instrumental miniatures that sound more like Animal Collective or Boards of Canada than their folk-rock contemporaries such as Big Thief. On their new album, Jellywish, Florist go in the opposite direction, paring everything back to the simplest, most immediate songcraft. The songs largely comprise just Emily Sprague’s voice and acoustic guitar, with perhaps some piano or burbling electronics in the margins, but the tracks that feel the most fully realized incorporate a gentle rhythmic push from the drums plus other subtle instrumental embellishments.

For this reason, single “Have Heaven” is one of the album’s finest moments, carried along by a warm thrum of instruments that act in concert, like a heartbeat or breathing. “This Was A Gift” is also strong, with its nagging refrain of “Only the dead survive.” Indeed, mortality is a key theme among Sprague’s lyrics, counterbalancing the music’s gesture of wonder. The simple but effective opening track “Levitate” begins with the line, “Every day I awake, wait for the tragedy.” On “Started To Glow” Sprague confesses, “I’m thinking about dying again.” And on “Jellyfish” she sings “Nothing is guaranteed but death” atop a bed of gently brushed drums and wind chimes.

Despite this clear thematic focus, some of the lyrics and melodies come across like a first draft, their feel and phrasing capturing the immediacy of the song’s conception rather than being developed into more fully realized ideas. The album’s consistent tempo and tone end up making Jellywish feel strangely longer than its concise 34-minute runtime. But, when the band cuts loose a little, such as the lead guitar breaks on “This Was A Gift” and “All the Same Light,” it’s tantalizing to imagine where Jellywish may have ventured given more of a loose rein and a sense of adventure.

Tim Clarke

[2clementines]

Finally listening to the rest of the album 💚

[parasection]

🌟!!

I’m dating the greatest person in the word, @riddle-banshee !!!!