Maggie Rogers’ ‘Surrender’ Burns Bright in Its Emotional Catharsis

Transportive. That’s the best way to describe the experience of listening to the new self–titled album by Florist—less a band than an entity of folk music, conjured by songwriter Emily Sprague in solitude and in communion with a trio of friends. To make this record, the group lived and improvised together in a Hudson River Valley house as an exercise in resynthesis.

That sense of place is summoned instantly by the wistful opening instrumental “June 9th Nighttime,” which creaks and sways like a rusty porch swing, bathed in chirping crickets and rustling pine needles. Right before the song cuts off, it speeds up and slows down like a record player during a power outage. Suddenly, the listener’s only illumination is the moon, the stars, and the intermittent glow of lightning bugs. You’re there with the band on their screened–in porch as they draw and redraw the borders of their music.

At first, Florist’s 19 tracks may seem daunting, but a journey through the album reveals that more than half aren’t full songs at all. They’re atmospheric interludes that capture the band’s lovingly crafted interplay, which sound spontaneous at first but become more meticulous the closer you look. Some of the shorter pieces mimic wilderness phenomena caught on tape, and some of them actually are. The guitar solo on “43” lands like a flash of lightning, and even the twinkles of microelectronica that appear on “Bells Pt. 1,” “Bells Pt. 2,” Bells Pt. 3,” and “Sci–fi Silence” sound bioluminescent.

Sprague has elevated her songwriting to new heights and lifted some of the album’s full songs to transcendent peaks alongside it. “Red Bird Pt. 2 (Morning)” envisions her mother’s death through the eyes of her father in one of the most crystal–clear yarns she’s spun. “I can hear you singing still / Wake up in the morning, let the morning come / She’s in the bird song, she won’t be gone” she sings.

The personal and natural press up against each other on Florist songs, like “Spring in Hours” with the lyric “The way we speak our names / It’s the same as the blowing breezes across.” On “Feathers,” Sprague intones, “One day to come, it will never feel real to miss you,” and like all of her disclosures, it’s so specific and yet so universal that the “you” can be any you, the “I” any I. As she puts it, twirling her voice like a ribbon: “Come now, I’m ready to be infinitely open.”

Of course Emily Sprague was born in the Catskills; she made an album that sounds exactly like growing up in its woods and mountains. Give Florist an hour with your ears open and eyes closed, and they’ll take you there, too. ❋

LIYL: Big Thief / Adrienne Lenker, Sufjan Stevens, Moon Pix by Cat Power, Mono no aware, nature journaling, group hugs, the smell of wood smoke, falling asleep to the sound of rain.

BY JULIA POLSTER

On Feb. 9, 1958, Steve Allen and the guests of his Sunday night variety series marched through the NBC studios with Dinah Shore over to the set of her own show, singing and dancing all the way. The group followed cameras around hallway corners while performing Allen’s “This Could Be The Start of Something Big.” The final product survives in video form, a wildly impressive technological feat for its decade.

What’s most stunning about this short clip, however, is the intensity with which the blurry kinescope and staticky lyrics captured the optimism, excitement, and pioneering spirit of television in these early days. This artifact captures the sense that the only direction to go was up.

The hold that comedy television would have on 20th century American culture was reflected in its trailblazers. Allen, Ernie Kovacs, Sid Caesar, Lucille Ball, and many others shaped variety, sketch, talk, and situational comedy, the formulas of which have been perfected and subverted ever since. The competition among networks and later explosion of cable meant that different comedic styles ebbed and flowed, yielding a diverse lineup of entertainment.

One would expect that today, when there are endless possibilities and platforms for content, competition would once again breed comedic variety. Yet, when observing the critically successful series of our current decade, the opposite seems true: Stylistically, television comedy has become limited.

It’s easy to look at the current comedy offerings solely through the lens of what’s absent. When examining this year’s nominees for the “Outstanding Comedy Series” Emmy, it’s impossible to ignore the lack of multicamera sitcoms, a genre that swept the category during the heyday of NBC’s “must–see TV” in 1987. Today’s shows are all single–camera and fit fairly neatly into the categories of comedy–drama, mockumentary, and satire. There isn’t anything on television even close to the diversity of CBS’s Saturday nights circa 1973–74—forget a night with four wildly unique sitcoms and a top variety show.

The forces shaping today’s popular television aren’t random, but new networks of shared culture, social spheres, and technology. Even comedies like Hacks, Ted Lasso, and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel are subject to the same pressure as dramas like Stranger Things and Squid Game to provide concise and thrilling seasons with clearly recognizable viral moments. While this means less content overall, it also means that the best shows out there are pushing harder to avoid a weak episode.

Regardless of the specific reasons behind the change, a shift toward realism and surrealism is a constant in today’s programming. It could be out of a desire for television characters to more accurately reflect lived experiences as opposed to serving as broader archetypes. The perk of this is that deeper, more true–to–life stories are being told, which beyond providing fascinating material, builds a pathway toward empathy.

We can appreciate these interesting ways television has adapted to our time while acknowledging something is lost. But it’s