Florence + the Machine Fulfill Their Potential

Starting with Florence + the Machine’s 2009 debut, Lungs, Florence Welch has embraced the role of diva, chanteuse, provocateur, and pop-culture waif. 2015’s How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful showed the band and singer graduating from the pop and pop-punk approaches consistently employed on their first two albums, moving into more sublime and theatrical contexts. This trajectory is continued on their latest release, High as Hope, the ensemble’s freest and most expansive expression to date.

With the opening track, “June,” Welch adopts the confessional method. “You were broken-hearted/and the world was too,” she sings, a palimpsest of angelic harmonies swelling in the background. Music is alternately sparse and orchestral. “In Hunger,” Welch comments on anorexia: “At 17 I started to starve myself/I thought love was a kind of emptiness/and at least I understood the hunger I felt/and I didn’t have to call it loneliness.” The chorus then proclaims, “We all have a hunger.” Welch circuitously links the hunger induced by self-deprivation with a spiritual hunger inherent to the human makeup. The implication is that self-starving is – beyond the obvious assertion of control – an attempt to eliminate distractions, master the vagaries of the body, and experience an ascetic oneness with the universe. Welch strips away simplistic explanations regarding a widespread disorder, suggesting that the underlying drive is noble and natural, even if it becomes distorted when literalized.

“South London Forever” shows Welch reflecting on youthful days; i.e., audacity is often more audacious in hindsight, freedom more often than not a romanticized product of recollection. To echo the maxim my grandmother adored: “youth is wasted on the young.” “Big God” opens with a sonorous piano part, Welch stressing that “you need a big God/big enough to fill you up/sometimes I think it’s getting better/then it gets much worse/is it just part of the process/Jesus Christ it hurts.”

I’m reminded of the title track on Neko Case’s latest album, Hell-On, in which she explores the nature of God with oblique descriptions, concluding with the proclamation that “God is a lusty tire fire.” While there are bold similarities between Hell-On and High as Hope – both singers double down on existential and spiritual inquiries, delve more vulnerably into personal reflections, and address the connections between self and world – the differences are worth mentioning. To offer a broad brushstroke: Case ponders whether Eden ever existed, psychologically speaking, or if in fact we’ve been force-fed illusions (heaven, Norman Rockwell, the capitalist manifesto). Welch, on the other hand, laments the loss of Eden, vacillating between whether we can regain it or not. “Big God” suggests that inner peace is possible. “Sky Full of Song” expresses deep weariness but also that a transcendent clarity is possible (“I couldn’t hide from the thunder/and a sky full of song”). “Grace” acknowledges regret but also that letting go is profoundly healing (“Grace/I don’t say it enough”). While both artists integrate the visceral and abstract, creating aesthetic tapestries that are in turns pulchritudinous and jarring, the difference is in tone: Case navigating what she considers the likely construct of innocence, Welch trying to determine if innocence can be reinvented.

If High as Hope documents Welch’s growth as a lyricist and songwriter, it also underscores her development as a singer. On “The End of Love,” Welch recounts a dream from which she wakes with a “good opening to a song.” Later she sings, “In a moment of joy and fury/I threw myself from the balcony/like my grandmother some years before me.” The piece is epic portraiture, though the listener is struck that the song stands as a metaphor rather than a literal account: Welch’s use of symbols and surreal narrative to point toward her view of life, that existence is primarily energetic rather than material. That reality, however, doesn’t soften our experience of beauty and belonging as achingly ephemeral. While the piece makes use of stark imagery, the song is paradoxically uplifting, an accomplishment attributable to lyrical ambiguities but primarily to a sophisticated use of vocal tones and modulations (and complementary instrumentation). With this album, Welch proves herself worthy of comparison, in terms of songwriting and vocal skills, to Case, Laura Veirs, and Laura Marling, as well as luminaries Natalie Merchant and Edie Brickell.

High as Hope features a band maturing in grand fashion, fully embracing aesthetic possibilities, including the wonders of an ample budget and high-end recording facility. High as Hope represents an ideal scenario in terms of Florence + the Machine’s fulfillment of potential: a stylistic arrival or homecoming of sorts. It’s gratifying to observe a band that emerged in 2009 as a fresh and intriguing presence but has now evolved into an entity capable of creating art in the highest sense.