Flora from Kansas releases debut EP + shares one take video for 'Scared Away'
Flora From Kansas
Shares the brilliant, one take video for 'Scared Away'
Watch here
Debut EP 'Homesick' out now on Melodic
18 year old Flora Kay, a.k.a Flora from Kansas, is releasing her long awaited debut EP 'Homesick'. Growing up on a diet of Clairo, Girl In Red and Alvvays, Flora has been writing songs for the past few years, honing her craft around her high school work. The EP, which touches on themes of middle-school rage, young love and severe anxiety, has seen support from the likes of NPR, BBC 6 Music, Dork, KCRW and Brooklyn Vegan.
To celebrate the release of 'Homesick', Flora is sharing the brilliant, one take wonder video for 'Scared Away'. On the track Flora says:
"Scared Away is a song that represents what it’s like for me on a daily basis suffering with severe anxiety. The lyrics go into how hard it is for me to even just be in normal everyday situations without overthinking it. Musically there’s a contrast between the verses and chorus, with the verses being darker and the chorus more hopeful, asking for people to relate. The outro is actually my favourite part because I made up the vocal parts as we recorded them and I love how they sound against the piano."
Watch 'Scared Away' here
17 year old Flora Kay A.K.A. Flora From Kansas has already been writing music for 5 years, picking up the guitar in lockdown. “My dad and I often took long walks to a nearby gas station, where we had conversations about how life was going. It was then that we started discussing the idea of creating music together just for the fun of it.”, Flora describes. On a rich diet of Girl In Red, Faye Webster & Alex G, Flora began learning on Garageband before upgrading to Logic for her self-productions.
As the title suggests, Flora recorded all the tracks at home - making use of every part of the house. Laying down the guitars and vocals in bedrooms and the basement, adding touches on the worn-out piano in the living room. The whole house is alive with music, as Flora puts it “My dad and my brother and I all have our own little recording studios in our rooms, so we kind of go around the house from workspace to workspace.”
Her debut already showcases remarkable growth, from the youthfulness of acoustic minute-long pair ‘Remember Me’ and ‘Clothes’ to the mature hi-fi of anthemic highlight ‘Wait for You’. There’s an innocence to the tracks but there’s no lack of fidelity or interesting production, with reversed parts & multi-layered vocals. Ali Chant (Aldous Harding, Soccer Mommy) adds another layer of depth on mixing duties.
Moving lyrically between candid and surreal, the songs tackle teen anxiety, middle-child syndrome & high-school romance. ‘Clothes’ is a direct address to a manipulative ex demanding back their clothes, whereas ‘The Ghost is Me’ is a symbol-ridden fever dream of the anxieties of a middle child. ‘Scared Away’ candidly addresses social anxiety, ‘asking for a friend’. The EP closes out with a sparkling cover of Alvvays’ everlasting ‘Dreams Tonite’, Molly Rankins’ lyrics sitting as an easy companion to the rest of the EP.
‘Homesick’ serves as an early indicator of an already fast-growing talent, and while Flora from Kansas seems bound for broader horizons, her debut shows there’s no place quite like home.
Track list
1. The Ghost is Me
2. Wait for You
3. Remember Me
4. Scared Away
5. Clothes
6. Dreams Tonite
