Most Helpful Customer Reviews
|
|
23 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Finding Florence, 5 Jul 2009
When I first heard Florence and the Machine on Steve Lamacq's show I didn't get it. Here was an artist who was being hyped as a live sensation and one of the tips for 2009 and it didn't impress me. I didn't see anything special in the music, the voice or the delivery. It just didn't add up for me. But then recently I heard most recent single `Rabbit Heart (Raise it Up)' whilst driving on a sunny day with the windows down and the radio up. Then it clicked. And so here I am on a Sunday afternoon sitting on the floor of my living room with a beer in hand having just watched the Wimbledon Men's final, and Florence is singing down my ear "I'll cut your little heart out, `cause you made me cry."
Florence and the Machine for me is the glorious sound of someone who has sat down with a piano and a drum kit having just listened to too much Tori Amos and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. Florence has a strangely ethereal voice helped along by the slight echo in quieter moments of the songs and the layered choral like backing vocals. The sound is deceptive. It is simultaneously demanding and seductive. The drums are relatively simple designed for no other reason than to drive the songs. The piano adds melody in support of Florence's voice and if you listen carefully there are subtle layers an nuances in it that will slowly be uncovered as you listen more.
To follow all this Florence and the Machine could not hope for a better debut. It is simply a joy to listen to. The tracks fly by but you remember every beat of them. `Dog Days are Over' is a brilliant start and following this with the most recent single adds a nice bit familiarity. Tracks like `Howl' and `Kiss with a Fist' are then great additions before the rhythmic genius of `Drumming Song'. It then gets a little more widescreen and epic in its sound with the combination of `Between Two Lungs' and `Cosmic Love'. It then relaxes down to a more intimate and personal sound for the final three tracks which round off the whole album nicely.
It is a well crafted album that exhibits the quality and diversity of this band and especially Florence's wonderful voice. I feel like I have now found Florence and I don't want to go back.
Enjoy!
|
|
|
31 of 39 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
So I'm listening to the mainstream again?, 15 Jul 2009
A number of reviewers have started out by mentioning their age and gender. Let me continue that trend: I'm male and getting on for 58. In my time, I've been a Beatles/Rolling Stones, Hendrix, King Crimson, Siouxsie and the Banshees and All About Eve fan - to name just a few bands - and then some time around the millennium I abandoned the "boring" mainstream (sorry, Michael Stipe and 1990s R.E.M.) and started listening mostly to dark continental metal. That too has evolved, but the point I want to make very strongly is that Florence has reconnected me with a small fragment of the mainstream. A small but very significant fragment.
It's significant for a number of reasons. Yes, there's a gothic thread running through the album. Let's call it "gothic" rather than "goth" - I think that's a more accurate view. For a bright and "big" album (apparently, and in reply to another reviewer, Florence is on record as saying that she wants to make her music "big"), many of the lyrics are, of course, quite dark. In fact, "Girl With One Eye" is dreadfully dark - despite which the album has been accepted into the "mainstream" world without question. I can think of a great many doom metal and death metal albums, but none of them are ever likely to make the same journey!
I see this album as a great, crazy achievement in itself, and as a wake-up call to some other artists. OK, so it isn't a competition - it's never been that - but there are plenty of successful artists out there who seem content with "less". One thing I've discovered from my journeys around continental metal is that "more" is an important part of the emotional hook: I think of it in terms of colour and texture. And this album is brimming over with colour and texture.
To those who are disappointed that this Florence isn't quite the same as the live Florence, I'd say that the drama of the live gigs surely couldn't really work in the longer term - not if you're planning to put the CD on repeat. The studio version of "Bird Song" on the bonus CD has a rather different character compared to the YouTube videos, but it works perfectly well for me.
Some reviewers have made comparisons with other singers, past and present. On "My Boy Builds Coffins", I hear something of the style of the late and much-missed John Martyn. Personally, I don't hear much Kate Bush in Florence's approach (stay away from those squeaky high notes please, Florence!), but she herself mentions Grace Slick as one of her influences and, well, perhaps something of that shows through. The key to Grace's way of singing, apparently, was that she was trying to emulate the sound of the electric guitar. That's a kind of madness in itself - and madness of a very special kind is something that Florence promises to deliver much more of in the future.
Unless, that is, she gives up all this wacky stuff and turns into one of the best white soul singers ever ...
|
|
|
34 of 43 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Elemental Stuff !, 4 Jul 2009
Ms Welch and her band of merry minstrels
can be proud of this astonishing debut.
Rock-solid leftfield pop of the very highest pedigree.
A truly original and powerful new voice which The Wolf is
glad to add to his ever expanding collection of weird and
wonderful female singer/songwriters.
This is a voice with power; a voice possessing real passion.
Wayward , feral and intoxicating.
There really isn't a weak track in this collection.
Highlights however would have to include : 'Dog Days Are Over',
whose benign ukelele (I think ?) and handclapping in the
opening verse quickly gives way to a real powerhouse of a song.
The haunting high-voice interludes made the fur stand
up on the back of my neck. Elemental and thrilling.
'Blinding' is another spellbinding performance. The pounding
percussion, beautifully constructed string arrangement and
wild vocal harmonies really do transport us to another world.
Pagan, primitive and perfectly realised.
'Between Two Lungs' creates yet another extraordinary sound-world.
It is almost as though this song might have burst fully formed out of
the dark soil of a forest clearing. Organically perfect in every way.
'Rabbit Heart' delivers the kind of exhilarating electro-pop which
lesser mortals, such as Little Boots, could only dream to aspire to.
A majestic anthem.
Trust me here.
If you haven't heard the album yet you have the biggest treat in store.
One of the year's finest releases so far.
Essential.
|
|
|
Most Recent Customer Reviews
|
![Lungs [Expanded]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61xeHIwkpqL._SL500_AA280_.jpg)
![Lungs [Expanded]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61xeHIwkpqL._SL75_SS50_.jpg)
