Album Assessment: Florence and the Machine, ‘Dance Fever’

As a star, Florence and the Machine has all the time appeared unshakable. Since crashing into the higher echelons of mainstream pop with 2009’s Lungs, Florence Welch has proven an unwavering dedication to creating artwork that’s as grandiose as it’s timeless, sustaining a imaginative and prescient that may solely be described as titanic the place others would accept “anthemic” or “cathartic.” Not even singing ‘Margaritaville’ alongside Jimmy Fallon days earlier than the discharge of her new album may shatter her otherworldly persona or detract from the fun of her performing a brand new track that very same evening – 4 albums into her profession, she clearly has nothing left to show. Her songs are dwelling to larger-than-life feelings lifted by her sweeping ambition and inimitable voice, and even when Florence and the Machine data have generally fallen wanting cohering into a fair greater and extra profound assertion, doing something aside from marvel on the spectacle appears totally out of the realm of chance.

Dance Fever, the band’s newest, finds Welch returning to the euphoric bombast of her earlier work with the intention to interrogate what she and her artwork are made up of; her manner of “winking at [her] personal creation,” as she instructed Vogue. Greater than some other Florence and the Machine album, it’s deeply human and conflicted, approachable but struggling to let go of the musical and symbolic language that has come to outline the mission, the place all the things is a matter of life and loss of life. In the course of the writing course of, Welch was fascinated by the idea of choreomania, the “dancing plague” that unfold throughout Europe within the late Center Ages and drove massive teams of individuals to bop themselves to loss of life – the right metaphor for somebody so feverishly dedicated to the ritual of efficiency, even when it comes at the price of true self-knowledge.

If Welch’s songwriting tends to border private and collective battle as a relentless battle between heaven and hell, Dance Fever instantly stands out by setting the drama on a a lot smaller stage. ‘King’ opens with an argument within the kitchen in regards to the limits of her artwork and the prospect of motherhood, and earlier than it has the time to erupt right into a traditional Florence and the Machine anthem, the track’s persistent drum beat accompanies the singer as she turns the dispute inwards. “I’m no bride/ I’m no mom/ I’m king,” she howls, a chorus as iconic as her finest however in the end extra placing for its ambivalence, every king touchdown on an ominous notice. She continues to achieve for such declarations all through the album’s first half; the subsequent observe, known as ‘Free’, is a extra simple try at capturing the unabashed pleasure of music in an album that appears consistently torn by its energy. It’s instantly offset by the piercing self-awareness of ‘Choreomania’, which begins with the road: “I’m freaking out in the midst of the road with the whole conviction of somebody who has by no means had something truly actually dangerous occur to them.”

At occasions, the confessional nature of Welch’s lyrics manages to rise above the theatrical and propulsive qualities of her music. As a lot as she contemplates her relationship with “the track” and revisits acquainted iconography that has marked her earlier work, she additionally demystifies her picture with admissions of crying right into a bowl of cereal and jokes about evangelicals and the way “Heaven is now overrated.” She’s “simply one other screaming speck of mud,” she sings on ‘Ladies In opposition to God’, and confronts herself with questions like, “Is that this the way it’s all the time been/ To exist within the face of struggling and loss of life, and by some means nonetheless maintain singing?” The extra the album progresses and he or she realizes she’s but to search out the solutions, although, the extra it begins to lose momentum, stumbling slightly than settling into the unsure stillness.

Although she reserves area for intimate cuts like ‘Prayer Manufacturing facility’ and ‘Restraint’, it’s right here that Welch and her collaborators fail to evoke the stress that belies them in a manner that feels intentional or imaginative, even when the rawness is fascinating. One of many quieter moments that leaves a extra lasting impression is ‘Again in City’, the place delicate waves of brass and synth illuminate a darkish and stressed evening. But it surely’s not simply the shorter songs that might have been fleshed out; after the opening trio of high-energy tracks, among the upbeat songs that try to select up the tempo (‘Dream Woman Evil’, ‘Daffodil’) may also really feel barely underdeveloped. This would possibly resulting from the truth that there’s a transparent distinction between the songs Welch produced with Jack Antonoff and people aided by Dave Baley of Glass Animals, and it doesn’t essentially serve to intensify the album’s divided core. However Welch’s lyrics can at occasions really feel much less impressed or potent, too, significantly with strains like, “Make me evil/ Then I’m an angel as an alternative/ Not less than you’ll sanctify me once I’m lifeless.”

All the pieces nonetheless sounds magnificent, in fact, even when not each track unravels with the identical dramatic depth as ‘Heaven Is Right here’, which truly advantages from being co-produced by each Antonoff and Baley. ‘My Love’ will not be essentially the most complicated track in Welch’s catalog, however its danceability has an odd manner of amplifying the heavy frustration of the refrain: “I don’t know the place to place my love.” That sentiment finds its manner again on the next observe, the place she marvels at herself for having made it via “this considerably drunken joke” and reaches a poignant realization: “Typically I see a lot magnificence I don’t suppose that I can cope.” On Dance Fever, Welch devotes all of her effort to the pursuit of holding onto it, extracting the true from the legendary.