This mesmerising debut album by Heather Minor and Emma Morton, two modern day folk maidens from Brighton, is a remarkable achievement.
The ten songs magically weave elements of modern classical music and traditional folk with microtonal music from India, Bali and Japan.
They do so in a way that is sophisticated yet totally free of artifice and the result has a grace and simplicity that is both transporting and bewitching.
The tones of Emma Morton's voice are so pure that they float like sine waves over sparse, minimalist arrangements on piano, harmonium and autoharp.
These songs of love and longing evoke a mood which is as tragically romantic as Millais's Pre-Raphealite painting of the drowning Ophelia.
The harmonies on the title track and on So It Goes have such a hymnal quality that it's no surprise to learn that the album was recorded in a church.
St Laurence's, Falmer was also where the album launch concert was held and echoes of John Bunyan's To Be A Pilgrim can be heard on Death And The Lady.
Died Of Love is the song that indicates most clearly how fully the young duo have immersed themselves in the folk music of Old Weird America and the British counterpart. The lyrics here have been freely adapted from two traditional ballads: A Brisk Young Sailor and The Butcher's Boy. The despairing words are accompanied by low notes of piano which Minor says was played to sound like a drowned bell. This lends an appropriately eerie accompaniment to the chilling closing lines "Dig my grave both wide and deep, Put a stone at my head and feet, Put over it a snow-white dove, To show the world I died of love"
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There is something unique and fragile about this album that makes me wonder whether its delicate beauty is a one-off. I dearly hope that this is not the case and that there are is more gold to be mined from these rich sources.
Time will tell, but for the moment White Flowers gives plenty of cause for celebration.
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