Joggers with high heels. Chocolate spiked with chilli. If the balance is just right, the result can really pay off. When Maisie Peters blended British indie pop with American country on her new album Florescence, she came surprisingly close to making it work.
On her third LP, the Sussex-born singer-songwriter flies across the ocean to Nashville to create something warm and twang-adjacent. An album about healing and learning to blossom, Peters has always been open and loud about her influences, proudly naming Taylor Swift, whose Eras Tour she recently opened at Wembley, as one of her biggest inspirations. So it’s no surprise that Florescence echoes the vibe of Swift’s Red. But the issue with this album isn’t as much with the ambition as it is with the commitment. Florescence keeps one foot firmly on British soil throughout, so all the country elements just come across like a costume, albeit a well-designed one.
“Mary Janes” is a promising opener, its mixing and arrangement immaculate. But the lyrics are a bit odd. Not that there’s anything necessarily wrong with singing about your buccal fat, bra cups that are “barely As” and not being “the coolest or the greatest in the club”. This type of blunt internet vernacular worked great on an album like Brat, but here it’s jarring against the analogue texture of the production. Thankfully, on the next track, “Audrey Hepburn”, Peters locks in and paints a vivid scene with the confidence of a seasoned novelist.
The album’s centrepiece is “Houses”. It’s the longest song
and the most emotionally ambitious. The confessional details and soft
delivery turn it into a tender, self-contained story with a kind of
winding, introspective beauty that nods to Joni Mitchell, Father John
Misty and, of course, Taylor Swift (whose fans will surely spot its
track-five placement). It is a missed opportunity, though, that the
guitar is underused here, when it could have shouldered some of the
emotional weight that Peters’ vocals sometimes miss.
The lead single “My Regards” is the album’s best argument
for itself and a rare moment where the whole country venture actually
makes sense. It doesn’t reach for Swift, Kacey Musgraves, Beyonce or
anyone else. Peters makes the pop-country fusion entirely her own as the
track bursts with confidence that the rest of the record barely
touches. “Questions” and “You You You” are also excellent examples – both boasting Peters’ signature sound and make you wish the whole record was more like this.
So at first glance, Florescence has all the right
ingredients. The production is consistently flawless: Peters stepped
into a co-producer role for the first time and made a record that sounds
expensive and spacious, but not for a second syrupy. The storytelling
is often genuinely captivating. But the country flourishes never stop
feeling like an odd detour, a genre tourism of sorts. Some tracks, like
“Girl’s Just Flying”, play more like auditions for Hannah Montana: The
Movie. Not quite convincing to land the part and compete with other
country staples but enough to alienate a good portion of listeners from
other parts of the world. You find yourself hoping Peters would either
fully commit to the bit and mean it, or come home, back to Columbia Road
and the specific, personal geography that made her previous work so
compelling. In totality, Florescence is a lovely record that mistakes a change of scenery for a change of self.
