Florence and her banshee voice are as fabulous as ever
Florence + The Machine Dance Fever Out now ★★★★ The Smile A Light For Attracting Attention Out now ★★★
One winter evening in 2009 I went to Birmingham for the NME Awards tour, featuring four young bands. Unexpectedly, the one at the bottom of the bill was the best. The singer was mesmerising – a bashful banshee with flaming hair and a fabulous voice.
It was the kind of show that sends you straight to the merchandise stall afterwards. Which is how I came to be the proud owner of a Florence + The Machine exercise book.
Thirteen years on, Florence Welch is still making a beautiful noise. For her fifth album, Dance Fever, she has drafted in Jack Antonoff, the female stars’ favourite writer-producer, but you’d hardly know because Florence has such a stamp.
Her lyrics are fearlessly candid. ‘When someone looks at me with real love,’ she sings, ‘I don’t like it very much.’ This is a track called Girls Against God, which may be pioneering a new genre: anti-gospel.
Her vocals somehow exude both power and frailty. The music is often just a two-string chug or its modern equivalent, a simple synth pattern. And that’s fine, because Dance Fever is all about that voice.
Has there ever been a band with more spin-offs than Radiohead? Jonny Greenwood composes film scores, Thom Yorke started Atoms For Peace, Philip Selway and Ed O’Brien have made solo albums. Only Colin Greenwood has held back.
Now there’s a splinter group called The Smile, featuring Yorke and Jonny, plus Radiohead’s perennial producer Nigel Godrich and the Sons of Kemet drummer Tom Skinner. Yorke thus emulates Damon Albarn in having three bands and a solo career. And they say men can’t multi-task.
Their sound ranges from prog to Afrobeat, from the sublime (Free In The Knowledge) to the unlistenable (You Will
Never Work In Television Again). It’s reminiscent of PiL here, The Beat there, and Radiohead everywhere: their angst, intelligence and desolate beauty.