Sarah Mary Chadwick - Flourish Sarah Mary Chadwick

Grapefruit Records is proud to announce the release of Flourish, Sarah Mary Chadwick’s eleventh studio record. It’s a sprawling, 80-minute double album which does what the best double albums attempt to do—take us on a journey with a cinematic arc in kodachrome honesty. In this case it’s a hero’s journey as Flourish is furious, feminist, funny and occasionally danceable as it documents a near paralysingly difficult year.

While spoken word and hiphop is a departure for Chadwick, her literate lyricism invites us to challenge what we think we know about her as a songwriter. It is equal parts Death Grips, Kim Gordon, Earl Sweatshirt and Girls On Fire. In a masterclass of songwriting she uses women’s hairstyles as a metaphor for how talented women are depicted as dangerous or crazy: “Change your hair, ask for the Anne Sexton…..Ask for the Sylvia Plath, you’ll look good with that…Get your hair done fresh, ask for the Anne Heche.” She also name-checks Janet Frame, DMX, and transforms Stephen Crane’s famous line into “because it is glitter, because it is my heart.”

Musically, it’s DIY and scrappy as Chadwick recorded, mixed and mastered the album herself at home while figuring out how to get the fried sounds and sonic plunderphonics necessary for her dive into a new musical language. One can hear the pure joy of discovery she finds in looping and sampling and spitting out lyrics in a new way. She is playful, vengeful and confessional twirling the idiom in her freshly manicured hand like a shiny disco ball.

The record details and deconstructs Chadwick’s recovery from an abusive relationship, a life event that is dwarfed by the powerful rhetoric around a woman’s experience and violence towards women. À la The Guerilla Girls, her feminist ferocity is palpable and liberating as she takes swipes at pop culture and the patriarchy with humor and withering wit.