HOW BIG
For Florence Welch, the success of her first two Florence + The Machine albums 'Lungs' (2009 – Album of the year, Brit Awards 2010) and 'Ceremonials' (2011) meant five years of back-to-back recording, promoting and touring. The shows were getting bigger, the hair redder, the success wider and wilder.
HOW BLUE
A pop star at 21, with two international hit albums behind her, Florence discovered that in giving seven years to her music, some elements of real life had been left by the wayside. Coming back from tour Florence re-engaged with normal life: going out, falling in and out of love, and simply trying to learn how to look after herself outside of the hermetic bubble of life of the road.
“It was sort of a crash landing” Florence freely admits, “I guess although I’ve always dealt in fantasy and
metaphor when I came to writing, that meant the songs this time were dealing much more in reality.
'Ceremonials' was so fixated on death and water, and the idea of escape or transcendence through death,
but the new album became about trying to learn how live, and how to love in the world rather than trying
to escape from it. Which is frightening because I’m not hiding behind anything but it felt like something I
had to do.”
And so the new Florence, and her songs, started to swim into focus.
HOW BEAUTIFUL
The result is 'How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful' a collection of songs, written and recorded over the course of 2014. Produced by Markus Dravs (Coldplay) with contributions from Kid Harpoon, the third album by Florence + The Machine is live-sounding, tune-rich, unhinged in all the right places and powerful in all the best ways. In voice and, ultimately, outlook Florence has never sounded better. She notes;
“I wanted to make something that was big but that had a gentleness to it. That had a warmth, that was
rooted. I think that’s why we went back more to the live instruments. Something that was band-led almost.”
'Ship To Wreck' being a prime example; written with Kid Harpoon it opens the album, and showcases Florence and Dravs’ enthusiasm for reframing her distinctive voice. Whilst her bandmate and long-time studio right-hand-woman Isa Summers assisted with writing the epic title track;
“'How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful' was the first song I wrote for this record, literally as I just came off
tour, “ she explains, “and then I went off and had this incredibly chaotic year, and that all went into the
record. But in the end, the feeling of 'How Big How Blue...' is what I came back to.”
“The trumpets at the end of that song – that’s what love feels like to me. An endless brass section that
goes off into space. And it takes you with it. You’re so up there. And that’s what music feels like to me.
You want it just to pour out endlessly, and it’s the most amazing feeling.”