Today on the AU review, we’re thrilled to be premiering “The One You Need”, the latest single from Chapel Hill Americana rocker Florence Dore.
Taken from her forthcoming album Hold the Spark, out May 1 via Propeller Sound Recordings, “The One You Need” is a beautifully intimate slice of acoustic folk that explores the ache of wanting to matter deeply to someone, only to realise the relationship has changed shape. With Libby Rodenbough’s aching violin circling Peter Holsapple’s 12-string guitar, the track feels both tender and emotionally bruised. I’m a sucker for moody strings, and “The One You Need” has it in spades.
Florence Dore turns the universal ache of wanting to be needed into something intimate, literary and quietly devastating on “The One You Need”.
What makes the song hit even harder is Dore’s use of shoreline imagery throughout. “Danger Beach” becomes a place of emotional peril, while tides, storms and shifting waters mirror a relationship that can never quite find safe ground. When she sings “There’s been a storm on danger beach / And we both know I’ll never be / The one you need,” the resignation lands with devastating clarity.
Speaking exclusively to the AU review about the song, Dore shared:
For a long time, I thought that songwriting meant writing about broken hearts. I moved through one disastrous relationship after another, which was great for writing songs-but not so hot as a way to live. That changed when I finally settled down. I’ve been happily married to my drummer for more than twenty years now, and it turns out that has given me an entirely different emotional landscape to write from. It’s more varied, for one thing. Instead of only telling my own story, I realized I could write about other things: other people’s disastrous relationships, deep feelings about other aspects life, and, emotional scenarios invented from creating characters who have nothing to do with me. The common denominator is obviously emotion. Songwriters are always searching for whatever brings up big feelings. “The One You Need” song grew out of the emotional reality of wanting to matter deeply to someone—to be the essential ONE rather than optional or one of many. I think that feeling of wanting to be needed is something almost everyone has experienced at some point.
I’m an older sister, a teacher, and a mother. We all come into this world with certain ethical propensities, I think, and then we live in a world that tests them. Those tendencies sometimes grow—or sometimes they die, depending on whether or not you survive what you’re given. I had lousy parents, and that vacuum at the top made me a caretaker. This song imagines a painful rejection that comes from trying to fulfill a that role and being turned away. “The One You Need” is entirely grounded in maternal feelings. Where “Hold the Spark” is about the beautiful, connected relationship between mother and daughter—specifically my relationship with my own child—this one taps into the inverse: the failure to engage on that level.
“The One You Need” is forceful but intimate, pretty but sad. There’s a sense of restraint in the sound, even though the emotions aren’t restrained at all. It’s direct and uncluttered, with an arrangement that lets the melody and lyric stand front and center. My favorite lyric is, “If it were up to me / I’d change the wind and move the sea / so I could be / the one you need.” I like this line because it expresses the primal nature of the desire to be the one. Love is not always pretty, and here the singer is being raw about her outrage about the fact that not all things are, in fact, “up to” her.
To me, Libby’s [Rodenbough] violin sounds like crying, and that lush twelve-string acoustic rhythm Peter Holsapple plays grounds her melodies in solid rhythm. The stand-up bass was the right choice for this song—it’s another beautiful melody in here, but it also punches enough too to give the song forward motion. Peter is one of my favorite songwriters on the planet. I was listening to his song, “She Was the One” on repeat. I learned to play it, asked him about how it works musically—to which his answer was, “math.” The chords cycle around and around so that verse lines do not always begin on different chords. I thought it was mesmerizingly so I tried to imitate that idea. When I finished the song and told Peter the name was “The One You Need,” he joked that one day we should write a combined song called “She Was the One You Need.” Peter’s been a great friend and mentor in my musical journey—having him play on the record, and especially on this song, means the world. I have enough humility to know that this song doesn’t rise to the level of Peter’s, but if it sounds half as beautiful as “She Was the One” I’m happy.
“The One You Need” arrives as a preview of Hold the Spark, Dore’s strongest album to date, produced by Don Dixon (R.E.M.) and featuring an all-star cast including Jason Wilber (John Prine), Mitch Easter (R.E.M., Wilco), Robert Sledge (Ben Folds Five), Kelly Pratt (Father John Misty), and Eleanor Whitmore (Elvis Costello). The album moves across twangy country-rock, acoustic folk, ’90s alt-rock, and ’60s psychedelic folk-rock — a literary set of American character studies for anyone who takes songwriting seriously.
Florence has some shows lined up in early May, where you are bound to hear this and other new tunes from the album. The launch show is at Cat’s Cradle on the 7th of May in Carrboro, NC. Head to her website for all the details and tickets – dates are listed below. Get along if you can and support live music.
Upcoming Florence Dore Shows
May. 6: Winston-Salem, NC @ Gas HIll
May. 7: Carrboro, NC @ Cat’s Cradle – Record release show
May. 8: South Richmond, VA @ Chilton House
May. 9: Montclair, NJ @ Bandwidth Inn
May. 10: North Adams, MA @ Sing for Your Slumber, Solo show
You can keep up to date with Florence Dore via her Website, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Spotify and Apple Music
Header image credit: Joel Elliott
