There is something special about music that doesn’t feel the need to announce itself, that trusts a melody, a voice and the exact few carefully chosen sounds to do the talking. A quiet confidence that is refreshing in a world of hyperbole and brashness. Flowers, the latest album from Kelley Smith, doesn’t just inhabit such understated territory; it makes that place its own, finding its strength in delicacy rather than drama, in the gentle interplay of instruments and the unhurried unfolding of songs that reveal a little more with each listen.
Opener ‘Little Match Girl’ sets out the stall with an almost effortless elegance. Dexterous acoustic guitar lines weave around Smith’s crystal-clear vocals, while a keening violin flits through the arrangement, adding warmth and colouring the well-orchestrated space. Something of Joni Mitchell’s poetic sensibility lies alongside a sense of Dolly Parton at her most folky and finessed, though, of course, Smith brings her own sonic personality to the meeting of those musical worlds.
‘Birdsong’ is another exquisite exercise in restraint, a song dripping with grace; it is both spacious and spectacular in its understatement. It proves that Smith understands the power of less-is-more, and that there is as much beauty in the ephemeral nature of a watercolour as there is in the vivid oil painting.
‘Aurora’ takes that philosophy to its logical conclusion, achieving pin-drop perfection through the atmosphere and anticipation that pools and percolates in the spaces between notes and words, as much as in the sounds themselves. It is music made from suggestion, shadow, negative sonic space, and the delicious possibility of what might happen next. ‘Down By the Water’, meanwhile, is pure poetry set to the gentle tumble of banjo notes, a song whose understated musical setting gives its lyrical beauty room to unfurl.
Ultimately, Flowers is an album that understands the quiet art of the unsaid. Kelley Smith doesn’t need to raise her voice or reach for grand gestures; she merely sketches the song and lets the rest unfurl naturally in the space between artist and listener.
