FEATURE:
Cosmic Love
Florence + The Machine’s Lungs at Fifteen
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A hugely impressive and important…
PHOTO CREDIT: Immo Klink
debut album turns fifteen on 3rd July. Fronted by Florence Welch, Florence + The Machine featured, in 2009, Christopher Lloyd Hayden, Isabella Summers, Rob Ackroyd and Tom Monger. Lungs is the amazing and epic debut from the group. Recorded across several studios – including The Smokehouse in London -, it featured incredible singles like Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up), Dog Days Are Over and Kiss with a Fist. Even though I really like all of Florence + The Machine’s five studio albums, I think that Lungs is still the best. Exhilarating, urgent but also full of layers and nuance. I wanted to mark the fifteenth anniversary of one of the most essential and important debut albums of this century. Lungs features production from James Ford, Paul Epworth, Stephen Mackey, Eg White and Charlie Hugall, with additional production by Isabella Summers. Lungs has been reissued several times: an expanded version, Between Two Lungs (2010), a digital E.P. subtitled The B-Sides (2011), and a Tenth Anniversary Edition (2019). I am going to get to features and reviews for Lungs. There are not that many press interviews with Florence Welch from 2009. I found one, from DMY, that I want to start out with:
“Momentum has been building in earnest since the start of the year, with the debut album ‘Lungs’ hitting number two when it was released back in June. This summer’s slew of festival dates and a recent Mercury Music Prize nomination suggests the pace looks set to continue.
Despite the critical acclaim however, spend a few minutes with Florence and her music and you’ll find that she’s an odd candidate for mainstream approbation. Underneath the glossy production, ‘Lungs’ is full of witchy-woman weirdness and demented gothic fantasies: there’s something wonderfully vivid and violent about the noise she makes, most evident in the gleeful savagery of “Kiss With A Fist” and “Girl With One Eye”. She’s far more willowy and slight in the flesh than one would imagine, even having seen her on stage, and it’s hard to equate the soulful bellow with the porcelain girl perched on the sofa.
We get off to a guarded start – she seems a little aloof and polished, with a whiff of media-training, but she brightens up as the interview moves from small talk to art and angst. Once the conversation flows, she reveals an enthusiastic and scattershot brain, her mind wandering mid-sentence, gesticulating at random as she jumps from top to topic. By the time we’ve finished she’s bursting into spontaneous song sprawled on the pub floor. Her exuberance is infectious, and, as she leaves the room, I get the feeling that, at her very core, Florence cannot help but make music.
I know this sounds obvious, but I want to talk to you about the music. I think there is a really epic quality to the album…
Yeah, I think that’s a good word to use!
It’s not trivial kitchen sink observations, it seems to be far grander…
Y’know what, I think I have always had trouble writing – I can’t even write a diary – I’ve always found it hard to document real life. I try to remember things by items of clothing or strange things that happen. I think it comes from reading a lot – reading a lot of poetry and being interested in language and phrasing and things like that. I think I wanted to make things that wouldn’t stick out as a point in time, d’you know what I mean? Something that was more all-encompassing, more trying to create a landscape or feeling, or a nightmare that someone could walk through.
Something that would stand the test of time?
Yeah I think so. I wanted to make something that was classic rather than of the moment.
Self-doubt is obviously universal, but the violent imagery is something that’s often associated with male artists – like Nick Cave or Tom Waits. Are you conscious of being a ‘female singer’ at all?
Well, I think that throughout history there has been something really intoxicating about female performers. I know from having watched and being really inspired by them. I think it’s that mix of being really powerful and very vulnerable which is I think something that women can convey perhaps better, or perhaps it comes across better in women because we’re more emotional creatures. But that strength and fragility in one package, which I think is wonderful. I mean, going all the way back to Ma Rainey and early blues singers, I think people have always been interested in female singers.
Are there particular female singers that you’ve been inspired by?
Well, vocally Etta James and Eva Cassidy. I think Alice Glass from Crystal Castles, like, her performances just blow me away! It’s like this tiny little creature with such demonic presence. She’s completely mesmerising; terrifying and wonderful. I really though she was incredible. She seems like this really strong female presence and again it’s like that masculine and feminine conflict – taking yourself apart. The thing is a lot of my performance comes from watching male artists and like punk bands; that sense of domination, of controlling the stage and it being your domain. So it’s a real mix. It’s like an internal battle onstage, an exorcism thing.
These are obviously your musical influences, but on a wider artistic scale, where do you draw inspiration from?
I think it’s things that are beautiful and sad. Like the model for Millais’ Ophelia – what was her name? She died of pneumonia from modelling in the bathtub. [PR, helpfully: “Lizzie Siddal”] Lizzie Siddal! Thank you! I’ve been trying to remember that for as long as I have been talking about her. It’s a really great back-story to that – she was like a muse for a lot of the pre-Raphaelites and they were all really into lithium, and she was doped up in the bath and the candle went out and she didn’t want to move because he was so into his painting, and she got pneumonia and died. And it’s just that sense of beauty and sadness behind everything.
If you were trying to describe the feel of your music to someone who couldn’t hear it, is there a particular painting or image that you could point them towards that best describes the atmosphere you’re trying to create?
Oh… um…[pauses for thought] probably a mix of that woman who did the Exploding Shed , Millais’ Ophelia and that Jenny Holzer painting. Have you ever seen that one where it’s like “Don’t talk down to me. Don’t try to be nice to me. Don’t…”
Yeah, I know the one.
It’s just a bright pink painting – I’ve got a postcard of it – but it’s just so amazingly aggressive. It’s great!
Is there a particular track on the album that you’re most proud of?
I think probably “Cosmic Love” is my favourite. I think that one feels like it just happened so naturally out of half an hour. I wasn’t even thinking about it. I mean it didn’t even exist before that half an hour; none of it existed. Not on the piano, or going round in my head. It just suddenly appeared and it was perfect. Well, I thought it was perfect. At first I thought it was a bit too romantic even; but it’s not that romantic, it’s quite dark. But yeah, that’s my favourite one.
Are you working on anything new at the moment, or are you still just processing the album?
I’ve sort of started. I’ve written some other stuff. I’m just looking forward to getting back in the studio. I feel like this album’s out there, it’s doing its job and I’m getting to play it, which is really fun. But there’s this ‘dissatisfaction with self’ – “must create” – “I’m unsatisfied, I must make something, I must verify myself!” I feel like every time I come on stage those two sides of myself get put back together and it all makes sense. For a minute.
Can you be creative on demand? Do you think, “right I’m going to sit down and write an album over the next three months”, or is it a continuous process?
I think sometimes in my life I was most creative when I was doing other stuff, y’know, when I had a job, and went to Art College. It’s quite good to have it as a sideline I think. I might go and get a job! You get inspired by daily life more. This [the attendant PR and make-up artist and the back-to-back interviews she has already done this morning] can be a circus…
I imagine the process can be a bit too cerebral otherwise…
Yeah. It’s like, hmm, inspiration…[twiddles her thumbs]
Our photographer, Mikael, then proceeds to lie her on the carpet, where she looks suitably dead and tragic, and we continue the interview with intermittent breaks to accommodate Mikael’s directions and Florence’s spontaneous outbursts of song.
Mikael: Has anyone every told you that you look like Kate Bush?
[lying on her back] A couple of times, yeah.
Me: Do you get annoyed by comparisons to other people?
No. I mean, I think it’s just a way for people to understand it, and determinate if you like this you might like that… Thing is, my voice isn’t anything like Kate Bush’s. I think it’s the… well, she uses a lot of drums.
Perhaps it’s the persona. She’s got this whole – I hate to use the word – kooky thing going on…
Ah, the [mock American accent] ‘K word’… I’ll be like serious one day and not serious the next and everyone’s the same. Some days you’ll be tired and some days you’ll be… no-one’s ever one thing all the time, so it’s strange to be put into one persona.
Following a break in which she and Mikael compare tattoos, Florence is now posing for photos in front of a mirror on the wall
You said you couldn’t play any instruments when you first started out. Was it frustrating trying to communicate what you wanted to your band?
Well, I think because I can sing, it wasn’t frustrating. Making music was more like improvising, so it was such a rush when I found something that worked. So it was all about the feeling, and I think that comes across in the music. You can hear this absolute joy at being able to make sound. And building things out of my own ideas of what a song should be like was exciting. It was like building and experiments, y’know? With rhythms and chords. That’s why everything’s like “bang, bang. Stop, start.” It’s because I have no skill, I just have [theatrical whisper] enthusiasm!
So you try to convey your enthusiasm to the band and they interpret it?
Well yeah, but it’s kind of hard because you tell a really skilled drummer “well, you know, I want you to play the drums worse. Play it more like I play it!”. And then there’s no guitar on the album, so my guitarist has to make all these pedals to play like cello, or make a big weird electronic noise. But yeah, I think they understand it. They understand the passion…”.
I will move to an anniversary feature from Albumism. In 2019, they marked ten years of Lungs. I know there was some division among the press regarding Florence + The Machine. Many heralded them and Lungs, whereas others were a little less kind. Many writing them off. Lungs is still powerful fifteen years later. Even deeper cuts like Girl with One Eye and My Boy Builds Coffins are fascinating and should be played more:
“Debut albums can be incredibly tricky things to navigate. On one hand, you have the freedom to completely be yourself and deliver something that is true to you. There are no proverbial chains restricting your process or tying you to your past. Your voice, should you have discovered its purpose at this early stage of the game, is completely yours to own and to do with what you want. If your newfound audience love it, then you have succeeded in gaining more than you previously had.
On the other hand, if for some reason they don’t take to what you are offering, then that will not only be your debut album, but it may also prove to be your final LP. The price of this untrodden path, it would seem, is somewhat unattainable, and just may be a one-off musical experience.
Luckily for us, Florence + The Machine were able to bless the world with their debut album Lungs—a thirteen-track affair (with eleven of the tracks co-written by Florence Welch herself) that delves into everything from rock, soul and a whole lot of indie pop. And whilst Welch is in a unique league of her own vocally, it would be hard not to draw inspiration, comparison if you must, from those that came before her, part Kate Bush, part Annie Lennox, and yet utterly Florence Welch. Not bad work for a then-fledgling singer-songwriter who at the time, was all of just 22 years of age.
The lead single “Kiss With A Fist” created some controversy at the time with the lyrics speaking to what appears to be domestic violence. Coupled with the somber tone of the lyrics, and a slightly aggressive sound deeply rooted in garage rock and elements of punk pop, Welch explained that the song was indeed not about domestic violence, but rather the strength and force that love can sometimes find two people engrossed in. The psychological aspect over the physical, a binding of emotions that firmly sits in fantasy, not reality. Whilst the song was a solid first single, both lyrically and musically, it failed to chart well.
Following in the footsteps of “Kiss With A Fist” was the second single “Dog Days Are Over,” a beautiful track that draws on the richness of indie pop, blues and even folk, which in turn, allows the vocal prowess and beauty of Welch’s voice to be placed on full display. The unexpected explosion of notes and sounds throughout the song also paved the way for a sound that would soon be firmly associated with the band. This single was the first time that the audience got to truly hear the ethereal, almost whimsical component to Welch’s voice, two qualities that would also stand in contradiction with her tone, a commanding force in its own right.
Upon closer listen to the album’s third single “Rabbit Heart (Praise it Up),” it is impossible to ignore the multi-layering of Welch’s vocals, giving the effect of a mass choir rolled into one hauntingly beautiful voice. Although the lyrics are shrouded in darkness (“This is a gift / it comes with a price / Who is the lamb / and who is the knife?”, it is again the contradiction of these lyrics, which are steeped in fear and coupled with an uptempo sound, that managed to prime the way for the band’s first bit of solid chart success, reaching # 12 in the UK charts.
Florence + The Machine were a welcome, if not slightly frenetic, change from the tabloid fodder that was engulfing fellow Brits like Lily Allen and Amy Winehouse at the time. Whilst both singers were delivering profound work even with all the turmoil that fame and the like was bestowing upon them, it was Florence Welch, the self-proclaimed geek with red hair and porcelain white skin, that was forging a path for a type of voice that had not been heard in quite some time. Hers is a voice that seems to call upon the past and yet is entirely entrenched in the present.
This maturity in her voice was never more evident than on the songs “Drumming Song” and the cover of Candi Staton’s “You’ve Got The Love,” both also released as singles from the album. With “Drumming Song,” a love song that swims in the awkwardness that love sometimes makes us feel, Welch conveys an intensity and desire that belied her two decades on this earth. “You’ve Got the Love,” a song of empowerment, again allows the then-novice Welch another opportunity to bring her voice and vulnerability to a well-loved, timeless classic, something that she does to perfection.
Given that nearly half the songs on the album were released as singles, it would be criminal to ignore the beauty and complexity of songs like “I’m Not Calling You A Liar,” “Cosmic Love” and the loss of love which “Hurricane Drunk” so painfully demonstrates. It is incredibly hard to imagine that someone so young was able to write about so much loss; loss of love, loss of one’s self, and yet still convey a type of positivity. The loss is temporary, but the love is for a lifetime, or so we are somehow led to believe if we look and listen a little deeper.
At first glance, it could have been easy to dismiss Lungs as yet another British band delivering the stock standard indie pop of the time, along with splashes of rock and punk wrapped up in a neatly produced album. In some ways, that isn’t such a far-fetched idea. With a production team that consisted of accomplished soundsmiths like Paul Epworth (Bloc Party), James Ford (Simian Mobile Disco, Arctic Monkeys), Stephen Mackey (Pulp) and Charlie Hugall (Halsey, Ed Sheeran) who also offered writing support, Lungs ensured that the group became something far greater than just another one-hit wonder. Both Ford and Mackey also brought invaluable experience as band members, giving way for both the technical and artistic perspectives to meet, creating an organic approach which guaranteed that this album was only going to ever be considered nothing short of superb”.
I am going to end with a few reviews for the spectacular Lungs. The first is from DIY. They stated how, with so much hype surrounding Florence + The Machine leading up to Lungs, that it could have been a disappointment. Critics were very much forced to eat their words and sneers when the album did come out:
“After the sheer amount of hype (including a Brit Award!) that Florence and the Machine has been receiving for the past six months or so we were convinced that debut album ‘Lungs’ stood not a cat in hells chance of living up to it. We were spectacularly wrong. ‘Lungs’ is an extraordinary contemporary pop triumph. A fresh, new, individual and exciting record. It makes us tempted to put money on the Mercury already.
Overall ‘Lungs’ is best described as transcending. It blends its creators influences of everything from classic pop (Kate Bush is often cited as a predecessor) to gospel music, and if the closing ‘bonus’ track (a cover of ‘You’ve Got The Love’) is to be believed, dance music. Forthcoming single ‘Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up)’, with it’s gentle yet striking harp parts sounds exotic whereas the already ubiquitous ‘Kiss With A Fist’ is a rocky blues number like Jack White used to write before he started messing around with bagpipes. There’s many touchstones here (fans of Guillemots ‘Through The Windowpane’ will probably enjoy this for it’s orchestral splendour) but overall there’s nothing that this album sounds exactly like, as is its beauty.
Overall it’s hard to pick out highlights from this album as it works so well as a whole. At the same time it’s not impenetrable and there’s plenty that could and has worked as a single. ‘Dog Days Are Over’ is a fantastic example of this. It opens the record, yet as a stand-alone single is a triumph in itself. ‘My Boy Builds Coffins’ due to it’s subject matter should come off as some deliberate attempt at quirky, but as it’s delivered with such gusto it’s captivating. This brings us to our favourite song here, ‘Howl’. Only four seconds over what is traditionally considered to be the perfect length of a pop song it’s stunning in its depth and builds spectacularly to a euphoric climax.
Not helped by the fact that the album is called ‘Lungs’, more has been made of Florence Welch’s voice than any other aspect of the music. And yes, her voice is stunning but if this were to be the only attraction to the music then this would not be the record that it is. Her cast of supporting musicians, The Machine that is, all pull more than the weight of mere session players. A solo artist Florence may be, but there’s some great musicianship on display here and it more than compliments the delicate, yet powerful arrangements.
‘Lungs’ isn’t a record for everyone, it needs to be said. Those who favour a more stripped down, or ‘lo-fi’ approach will more than likely baulk at the shiny epic-ness of this. It’s understandable, but this is their loss. We’re sure that Florence and the Machine will live up to the expectations thrust upon them, and with this only being the debut album there’s still time for Ms Welch to get even better”.
There are a couple more reviews worth bringing in. The BBC had their say on a magnificent album. Even though Lungs missed out on a Mercury Prize in 2009 - Speech Debelle’s Speech Therapy won that year -, the critical acclaim and success it acquired – reaching number one on the U.K. album chart – means that it was this ground-shaking debut from the group. Led by the phenomenon that is Florence Welch, Lungs still has plenty of life and wonder fifteen years later:
“Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock since the beginning of the year, you’ll be aware of Florence and the Machine. Before even releasing an album, the first lady and her revolving band have been championed by BBC Introducing, invited to play Glastonbury and support Blur at Hyde Park, and won the Critic's Choice Award at this year’s BRITs. Now they're being tipped for Mercury Prize glory. How can an album possibly live up to the pressure of all that expectation? I don't quite know… but it does by the gallon.
Florence Welch's distinctive voice intertwines beautifully with harps, strings and drums as she sings her inimitable 'soul inspired indie' and 'Tim Burton-style fairytales'. The gothic pop of Lungs has been excellently produced by a crack team - Paul Epworth (Bloc Party, Jack Penate, Maximo Park), James Ford (Arctic Monkeys, Klaxons, Last Shadow Puppets) and Steve Mackey (Pulp, M.I.A.).
There's so much brilliant stuff it's difficult to know where to begin. The soaring crescendo of new single Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up), the achingly beautiful Howl and a breathtaking cover of The Source classic You Got The Love. Drumming is a fabulous nail-on-the-head song about what it feels like to be in love.
There are touches of Mama Cass on happy clappy debut single Dogs Days Are Over and at the other end of the energy scale, the twinkly loveliness of Hurricane Drunk. The low points are few – perhaps that I'm Not Calling You A Liar falls a bit flat between choruses, and the lyrics to Girl With One Eye are closer to disturbing than kooky. But mostly it's sheer gleeful bliss listening to Lungs.
Florence says music is, ''at best a kind of magic that lifts you up and takes you somewhere else''. With vocals building from breathy almost-nothings to soaring, arching crescendos and the accompanying harps, strings, hopes and dreams, this album takes you somewhere you'll never want to come back from. When news gets out that she writes her best stuff, ''when drunk or hungover'', Florence's transition from unknown to British classic will be complete”.
The final review I want to spotlight is from SLANT. They were full of praise for a debut album from a group like nothing on the scene in 2009. I remember when Lungs came out. I was blown away by it. I was familiar with Florence + The Machine, though I was not quite prepared for the scope and power of Lungs:
“Amid the ecstasies of praise for her songwriting, one of the less generous comments made this year about Florence Welch, frontwoman of Florence and the Machine, was journalist Miranda Sawyer’s description of her as “big-boned.” It was a surprisingly revealing inaccuracy. Although in fact physically slight, Florence—with her pre-Raphaelite tumble of russet hair and strong jaw—is a dramatic beauty given an illusory voluptuousness by the gossamer folds of her stage costumes. She has a powerful voice (a chorister’s range perverted by gothic cadences) and a feverish stage presence, dangling from lighting rigs and intermittently launching herself into the audience at her shows. She might be svelte, but in her music Florence certainly gives a full-bodied performance.
The opening number of the band’s Lungs, “Dog Days Are Over,” begins yearningly: Harp strings gently buffet Florence’s fluttery vocals as she describes how “happiness hit her like a train on a track/Coming towards her, stuck still, no turning back” before a swell of drum beats and handclaps lift the song to its exultant chorus. Florence urgently proclaims, “Leave all your love and your longing behind/You can’t carry it with you if you want to survive,” and for an exquisite moment it feels as though any heartbreak could be so easily surmounted. Inevitably, the momentum of the album slows after the impassioned rush of such an opener, but it remains a compellingly eccentric work. “Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up),” for instance, is a swirling coloratura about ritual sacrifice, and when Florence, her voice somewhere between terror and junked-up rapture, sings, “This is a gift, it comes with a price/Who is the lamb and who is the knife?,” she gives the scenario a frightening beauty.
Despite the album’s morbid overtones (“Girl with One Eye” reaches a new extreme in schoolgirl viciousness) Florence and the Machine is a less somber outfit than Bat for Lashes, with whom Florence is frequently compared. If Bat’s Natasha Khan prefers to go on a spooky midnight ramble to decide a boyfriend’s fate, Florence is more apt to sock him one: “Kiss with a Fist” is a wildly impolitic ditty about mutual domestic violence (“A kick in the teeth is good for some/A kiss with a fist is better than none”). It doesn’t quite work. Although there’s something slightly churlish in unfavorably comparing a finished song with its demo, “Kiss” worked considerably better in draft form, the roughness which made it seem like gutsy slapstick, rather than simple provocation, somewhat lost in the finessed album version.
Florence’s music is particularly sensitive to studio gloss; her singing is a fine balance between elegance and frenzy. Indeed, with a voice that is both soaring and ragged, Florence is perhaps offering tribute to her respiratory system in the album’s title. But if her lungs let her hold those high notes (or even better, as on “Between Two Lungs,” enable a first intimate moment between two lovers), Florence’s body also rankles in its ability to betray her feelings.
On the fittingly titled “Drumming Song,” Florence’s pounding head and heart in the presence of an ex reaches an audible volume, the dissonance amplifying until it becomes her puppeteer: “I swallow the sound and it swallows me whole.” While she can command her swooping vocals, her body rebels, wracked by fear, grief, and desire. She is made bestial by a relationship’s decay in “Howl,” her transformation a lycanthropic fantasy possibly too overtly sensual and bloodthirsty to find favor with Stephenie Meyer devotees, not least when she promises to “drag my teeth across your chest to taste your beating heart.” Only when she gets utterly soused on “Hurricane Drunk” does the free-fall from control seem pleasurable. Catching sight of her lover with another girl, she’s now sufficiently unmoored from her feelings to be wry about her heartache: “I brace myself, ‘cause I know it’s gonna hurt/But I like to think at least things can’t get any worse.”
Appropriately for a collection of songs where uncontrollable emotion develops into a kind of dyspraxia, the album stumbles in places. However earnest the attempt, Candi Staton’s “You Got the Love” surely doesn’t need any more reinterpretations, even if Florence cutely reintroduces good grammar into the title by changing “You” to “You’ve.” As that small gesture implies, Florence is still punctilious even when life beats her down; when it raises her up, she is magical”.
On 3rd July, the immense Lungs turns fifteen. I hope that more people write about it. Certified six-times platinum, it was a remarkable success. Introducing the world to this exceptional group, Lungs was much more than its six singles. It is a complete and compelling album where every track hits. If you have not heard Lungs for a while, then go and do so now. It is a pleasure writing about it ahead of…
ITS fifteenth anniversary.