Lizzyville

Florence & The Machine's Fear of the Dark

Photos & Show Recap | Florence and the Machine - Bowery Ballroom - 10.27.09

Video | Florence + The Machine - "Drumming Song"

Not my favorite Florence track off Lungs, but this is pretty sweet video, in which Florence is seemingly dressed as Cat Woman and dances passionately in a church, trying to get the theoretical "drumming" caused by the object of her affection out of her head.

More Florence + The Machine in the Form of Videos

BBC Introducing showcase at SXSW. Hints of Joanna in that harp, except Flo just sings. "The Machine" bears the instrumental brunt. The official video for "The Dog Days Are Over" is also worth a watch, but it ain't embeddable.

Florence + The Machine

"Kiss With A Fist," the Florence + The Machine single that many of us heard long before her debut, Lungs, dropped, was nothing to speak of. It's a White Stripes song. It's a Hives song. It's a rock song. Placed on the end of the lengthy Lungs, which at 13 tracks features two covers - "You've Got The Love" and "Girl With One Eye" - and 11 originals, "Kiss With A Fist" makes little sense, because the rest of the album is all Patrick Wolf, Annie Lennox, a smidge of Neko Case and a lot of gospel influence. There's definitely some Hayley Williams in there but I'll refrain from referencing solely other redheaded singers. It's a heavy album. It's a loud album. Florence Welch's voice will pierce your eardrums. You won't always love its consistent need to shout and get the feelings out, but the melodies for the most part make up for it.

At 22, she's a young lass. She hails from Ireland and as the story goes, was discovered in a club bathroom while singing in the stall. She had been writing songs for some time, but didn't do anything with them. That bathroom trip did wonders. So did getting into the studio, where the results seem to be just what Welch likes: the power of a "big, fat choir": big drums, vocal layering, heavily manipulated keys and the occasional (and unnecessary) guitar. Her lyrics are quite accomplished, which you'll observe in the track I've included below. She sings about "guilt," according to one interview, about love, about "air," about a bird that does something wrong and then bequeaths his guilt to the human who eats him.

Her own songs are never timid, never cute, and never without reference to countless forebears. Blame the producers: Welch is on Island Records, which hired Paul Epworth (Muse, Bloc Party, Goldfrapp, Annie...the list goes on) and James Ford (Mecury Prize-winning Klaxons album Myths Of The Near Future, a member of Simian Mobile Disco, and currently the drummer for The Last Shadow Puppets) to work their magic. The result is that there are some clear hits on this album and some clear non-hits. Drowned In Sound's early track-by-track assessment is worth reading to see what kind of "huh?"s the overproduction inspires.

Do not listen to the craptastic and lazy reviews that have listed Kate Bush and Tori Amos as influences of Welch's as if those two women are the only creative female singer-songwriters in the history of mankind. Also as Bat for Lashes said in a recent Pitchfork interview - why do women musicians have to be compared with women musicians? Awful. Those reviewers never should have been hired (inevitably on the basis of one capable piece of writing) and I'm not even going to grace them with a link.

Explore the intense vocal power in the video for "Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up)":

Now here's a track, my personal favorite:

Florence And The Machine - "Cosmic Love"