Flora Hibberd is a marvelous newcomer to the realm of indie folk. Her notoriety blossomed with the release of her single “The Absentee” earlier this year, and the East London-gone-Paris singer-songwriter has continued to move listeners since. Her emotive vocals command attention and strike for the heart, filling textured musical arrangements with a poetic knowing reminiscent of Leonard Cohen. Now, Hibberd is set to release her first EP on 1 November via Clear Light/Declared Goods, titled after The Absentee and featuring four tracks.
Hibberd’s latest single to feature on the EP is “As Long As There Is Night”. The song is deceptively sparse; though ample room is left for her moving vocal performance to stand center, a range of instruments contribute to the act of texturing its outer layers. Instrumentalists include Chris Burrows and Matt Arthur on electric guitar, Brigette Hart on violin, Hibberd on acoustic guitar, and J.C. Wright on acoustic, electric, and high-strung guitars, bass guitar, harmonium, squeeze box, treated melodica, harmonica, drums, and percussion. Directed by Jed Tozer, its music video captures the subtle poignancy of the song with ease.
Hibberd tells PopMatters, “This is a sailor song for love, for the waiting, for the remembering, for the futile hope that the past will become the future. For winter memories of summer, for the warm love that is miles away, for its eventual return.”
Regarding the EP release, she states, “The songs of this EP emerged over months and years, and were refined in bars, apartments, and on the streets. The Absentee was written fifty meters below the English Channel three years ago. ‘In Violence’ was written in 2017 in the garden of the Musée Rodin. Their influences are too many to name; random encounters with poetry, art, music, and language in all its forms have bled into my writing in ways of which I am often unaware. They are about real people and real events. But they are also about impossible people and impossible events. My hope is that they find you here, on the blurred edge between reality and dreams, in the half-awake place where the familiar merges with the unknown.
The Absentee EP is now available to pre-save.