FLORENCE AND THE MACHINE
High as Hope Universal
Verdict: An overcast offering from a force of nature.
FLORENCE WELCH has never been known for her minimalism. She broke into the mainstream with her gale-force voice, and rode that wave over three Florence and the Machine albums that pulled on visceral, theatrical instrumentation to offer pop music’s most cinematic, high-drama releases this decade.
High as Hope, the fourth offering, dials things right down — with diminishing returns. It’s a startlingly raw record, with Welch offering some of the most honest and personal lyrics of her career, and the production largely playing with slow-tempo drums, pianos and horns. But what’s missing is her usual exceptional knack for delivering searing vocal hooks and stunning melodies. A number of the songs on Hope fail to sink their teeth into the ideas Welch has laid out on the table, resulting in a record that fades from memory by the time it’s over.
Second single Hunger opens with a harrowing admission (“At 17, I started to starve myself”), and continues to reveal some of Welch’s most harrowing lyrics as she reveals her battles with addiction — “I thought that love was in the drugs/But the more I took, the more it took away”. But the track’s forgettable structure fails to live up to its emotional work, with a chorus that plods along with the same chords as the verses, circling around a barren vocal hook — “we all have a hunger”.
Songs like June and Big God are let down by similar trappings, with a lack of elevation leaving a noticeable emptiness. But this is a Florence and the Machine record, and it would be criminal to ignore the moments of essential beauty Welch unfailingly delivers.
South London Forever isa skyward-facing ode to the distilled, ephemeral kind of happiness to be found in partying; along with some of her most delicately poetic lyrics (“Young and drunk and stumbling in the street . . . like foals unsteady on their feet”), the chorus intertwines a modest beat with Welch’s falsetto, allowing it to unfold like an opening flower. Later, the hypnotic Patricia, written in homage to Patti Smith, makes use of thrilling handclaps and a stomping beat before dancing its way out in an ambient, stringheavy outro.
On Welch’s debut, Lungs, she balanced her towering crescendos with more meditative, folky moments — and the brilliant through-line was the way each song had been refined back to an essence, and allowed to soar where necessary. On High as Hope,
Welch is able to show off that ability to become a force of nature — but too often, the ideas are left feeling like they never made it past their first draft.