Perhaps it’s the extreme heat here on what is the UK’s hottest day of the year – a sweltering 27 degrees with ‘red alert – you’re all going to die’ warnings all over the meeja (can you believe that?) – but I mistook the artist’s name for ‘Our Kid’. Surely those warring Manc brothers couldn’t have got back together again in a different guise, could they?
Nope; they haven’t. And Orkid offers up a different fare altogether; subtle, laid back and slightly melancholic pop in the traditional Swedish fashion. That wasn’t always the case. The last time she recorded, three years ago, she was more of a Scandi-pop stylist, complete with titles like ‘Shy Boy’.
Or ‘Dithering Dick’ as shy boys like me were known, back in the day.
What has changed in that time is partly the experience gained from writing with other artists and songwriters in Europe and the US but mainly the impact of the passing of her mother.
The nascent EP ‘Where Flowers grow’, (no release date yet advised), is a tribute to mum and has previously been the source of two singles, ‘Proud’, and ‘Bed of Roses’. This is another single from it, the title track, and was conceived after she visited her mother’s grave, a trip which spawned the lyric “where flowers grow.”
‘Bed of Roses’ told the story of her parents’ last day together while in this one she reflects on the intermingling of different sensations and emotions at the graveside – of beauty and sadness – that she perceives in such experiences.
That reminded me that just this week the North of England’s biggest flower show showcased the rose dedicated to Saffie Rose Roussos, the youngest victim (eight years old) of the Manchester Arena suicide bomber at an Ariana Grande concert in May 2017.
And of course, Orkid, the orchid is known as a funeral flower, symbolising everlasting love for the deceased.
But I digress. It is that odd mélange of beauty and sadness that she tries to – and succeeds in – purveying here.
The theme is simply that the deceased can never be alone where flowers grow, even that, in one graphic line, that she feels she is “buried alive” with the loved one, and it works perfectly.
‘Where Flowers grow’ was co-written with LEW, who also provides backing vocals in the same sensitive way Tom Fleming of Wild Beasts used to do for Emmy the Great. It’s all rather sumptuous.
Find Orkid on:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/itsorkiid
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/itsorkid/
