Eliza Edens + Freaque at Icehouse

On Eliza Edens’ sophomore album We’ll Become the Flowers, she seeks to understand what happens after the end. Whether grappling with heartache or a loved one's mortality, the Brooklyn-based songwriter reimagines endings not as finite events but as devotional experiences that give way to new beginnings. Edens takes inspiration from folk luminaries such as Nick Drake, Karen Dalton and Elizabeth Cotten, sowing her compositions with introspection born from her own grief. What emerges is a glowing collection of songs that serve as a map through tumult, toward hope.

Freaque is for the derelicts, the heretics, the tree stumps, and those who live on the fringes of society. A tattered voice, made of strung out words, hung to dry over broken chords on his mother’s piano. His songs range from the kind of folk and blues you find in graveyards and gardens, to fuller grooves you can find in swamps, sewers, and junkyards. In a wooden womb of darkness, he took what he had and rose above a society that constantly tells us we are not enough, that we’re only worth the possessions we own, the money in our bank accounts, and our body's abilities. We do not have to conform to societal standards to be valued as human beings. That is why he creates music and art.