One of the most overlooked tools in an artist’s studio arsenal is silence, but “She Is The Flowers,” the follow-up to The Jacob Ifans Band’s impressive debut single, “Sun Don’t Shine” shows that here we have an artist who understands its power. It’s a song steeped in nostalgia—love lost, time passing, a sense of sweetness found within the heartache, and it is through resonance and atmosphere that such feelings are transferred to the listener.
This second single from the band’s debut album Eve’s Garden (due next year) was recorded on Hydra, the Greek island that Leonard Cohen regarded as his spiritual home. Some of his brooding majesty seems to still linger in the air in that place, and it seems to soak its way into the track here.
The result is a piece where atmosphere does the heavy lifting —a place where dark spaces, beguiling textures, and fragile harmonies reign, and where little else is needed. And those few more tangible tones and textures – a brushed beat, acoustic guitars that drift past on the wind, Maddy Constable‘s gorgeously whispered vocals, and a bassline which goes unheard but not unnoticed – act merely to frame the song, or perhaps tether it in reality.
If less is more, and artists have spent years demonstrating this to be true, then what “She is the Flowers” proves is that so much less less is also a lot more more!
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