‘Flesh To Flower’ is the new single release from Australia’s Heirloome, and it is the response to the untimely death of their 23-year-old brother where Heirloome experienced “the deepest grief of my life – it completely broke me” and responded by creating a magical world as protection from the pit of despair. Heirloome says: “It’s really me singing to him – asking his spirit questions about life, about what it all means… and what it is to die. I didn’t want the song to be dark – I wanted it to be filled with the mysticism of this human experience we are having, to transform the pain into beauty somehow. I wanted to create a magical soundscape where it was safe enough to feel the loss and begin to heal.”.
Although the story is heart-breaking, the song is utterly captivating and infused with beauty. It bubbles with harp strings and angelic harmonies and feels constructed from organic material and found objects, held together by the tick of a clock, raindrops, and tears on leaves and what it would sound like if spiders spinning webs could be converted into music. ‘Flesh to Flower’ has created the same complex, and unique, ambiance that is often found in the music of Björk and Kate Bush with Heirloome’s voice wavering but never breaking, as it battles the concept of losing a life so close to home. The flesh and the flower; the corporeal form and the spirit letting go. I hope that somewhere in the allusion of peace this magical land creates, Heirloome also found some peace through the writing and recording process.
The video, directed by Tim Kent (aka Stackhat), was filmed in the rainforests, daisy fields & meadows of Dorrigo, Australia (on Gumbaynggir land) and the verdant scenery is a spectacular counterpoint to Heirloome, whose clothes and skin are as pale as their hair is strikingly coral-coloured. It’s rare that a video complements the subject matter of a song so completely, but the video is really flower to the flesh of the song, and Heirloome’s desire to “create a magical soundscape where it was safe enough to feel the loss and begin to heal” is achieved through the exquisite symbiosis of both.
Heirloome socials: Instagram | Facebook | Website
‘Flesh to Flower’ Lyrics:
Will it eat me gently, when it does?
Will it burn me softly, when it does?
Will soil return me gracefully to seed?
A gardenia, catching flight
to become the breeze?
Brother, tell me – did it hurt?
Or was it like being born again in the dirt?
Did someone hold your hand?
And did you dream?
Did you call the angels in?
Did you think of me?
Oh the room, it gets emptier
Year by year
And the veils that lie between our lives
Get thinner still…
Year by year
Year by year
Year by year
Review by Paul F Cook
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