[Cover photo credit to Jesika Gatdula]
Spencer Hoffman’s self recorded debut EP A Flower From Behind is coming up from Park the Van and will arrive on February 25th. Hoffman’s debut single “Like a Bird“ is out now, accompanied by a video that features Hoffman roaming through a pastoral landscape near where he was born and introduces some of the themes of the album, including a poetic connection to the natural world.
A Flower From Behind draws inspiration from the American Folk tradition, Country songwriters such as Roger Miller and Guy Clark and 19th century Romantic poetry. The single “Like a Bird” was inspired by a poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley, “To a Skylark”.
Hoffman explains:
In the poem he pines to be able to sing with such natural joy as a Skylark, which flies so high it is heard but not seen. I was listening to a lot of Joni Mitchell and my friend Joules (Sea of Bees) and thinking that they get close to singing in that effortlessly untethered way. Singing is a joyful act but also one of mourning and sometimes desperation. I wonder if it is the same for birds.
