Shaina Hayes splits her year between touring and a vegetable farm in Shigawake, her hometown on the Gaspé coast of Quebec. Anyone who grows food for a living learns that a plant thrives on its own schedule. The grower picks the spot, feeds the soil and pulls the weeds, and the rest of the work is waiting.
“Flourish” carries that lesson into a love song. Hayes found the word in Irish poet John O’Donohue’s book Anam Cara (soul friend), which treats flourishing as a person growing into the fullest version of themselves. She turned the idea outward, writing a spring song about wanting that growth for someone close, and the wish comes with a grower’s patience built in. The singer’s job is to want it and to make room for it.
The arrangement makes that room. Hayes produced the track with her longtime collaborators Francis Ledoux on drums and David Marchand on guitar, bass and pedal steel, and they keep the frame spare, with mellow acoustic guitar and a light rhythm up front and pedal steel settling low beneath a voice held close to a breath. Every instrument leaves space around the singer the way good spacing in a garden row leaves light for each plant.
“Flourish” is the first look at Hayes’ third album, following to coax a waltz in 2022 and Kindergarten Heart in 2024. It sounds like the work of someone who has watched a lot of springs come up at their own pace and learned to enjoy the watching.
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