'Refined rather than overhauled' - Florence + the Machine's new album High As Hope
[rating]4[/rating]
It’s three years since Florence Welch’s last album and nearly a decade since she materialised as a fully-realised pop persona — a twirling blend of charity shop Stevie Nicks, millennial Kate Bush and self-aware Bonnie Tyler.
Though she went to a rock’n’roll inclined school — contemporaries included Jessie Ware and Jack Peñate — fame proved a roller coaster for Welch.
She’s looked uncharacteristically careworn in recent press shots — that might, of course, be merely a calculated shift towards an earthier image — and in interviews has reminisced, with a degree of regret, about booze-fuelled late nights, complete with hang-overs verging on out-of-body experience.
All of which makes High as Hope a heavy listen. She’s older now and wiser. Too much has gone under the bridge for her to be able to continue throwing herself into the arms of oblivion and forget the consequences. But what memories she has.
“Young and drunk and stumbling in the street outside the Joiners Arms, like foals unsteady on their feet,” she sings on South London Forever, which culminates with the narrator climbing onto the roof of a museum and then getting lost on her way home (we’ve all be there, Flo).
She has refined rather than overhauled her sound, which continues to unfurl like a booming update of the ghost of chanteuses past. Welch’s vocals, which a new generation of artists has faithfully mimicked, once more suggest Adele if Adele stayed up all night surrounded by joss sticks.
The morning after the debauched night before is one of the hoariest cliches in pop’s — and among the most difficult with which to identify.
However, many people will have emerged blinking into their 30s, wondering if the blur that was the previous 10 years was really worth it. That’s a universal struggle — and Welch’s early onset midlife crisis is communicated humbly and with soul-baring honesty.
