Florence throws off the shackles to start a Fever worth catching
In 2007, Florence Welch descended into that mystical world where Kate Bush meets Stevie Nicks, whirling and swirling in scarves and flowing dresses of satin, silk and chiffon. The albums LungsandCeremonials were all wide-eyed melodrama and she wasn’t found wanting, headlining Glastonbury in 2015.
Dance Fever is no less stirring but she has dialled down the bombast on her fifth album – and the result is much more satisfying.
King is driven by rumbling bass and piano and when the strings, electric guitars and brass kick in they don’t overpower. There is a Kraftwerk-like undertow to Free but with guitars and violins ebbing and flowing beautifully. The lyrics are more confessional and intimate too. She sings on Girls Against God ‘what a thing to admit when someone looks at me with real love I don’t like it very much’.
On Cassandra, Welch says ‘riot vans are plainly in view’. She could be evoking a dystopian future, or commenting on recent turbulent events such as the Black Lives Matter rallies or the 2021 clashes between police and protesters at a vigil in London for Sarah Everard.
She is surprisingly comfortable in the acid rock territory of Dream Girl Evil, like a south London version of Jefferson Airplane. The album’s title song and another, Choreomania, references the phenomenon of frenzied dancing among villagers in medieval times in some unexplained collective psychosis. It equates in Welch’s mind to the release felt after the end of successive lockdowns.
This is the sound of shackles thrown off in every sense. Dance Fever is an album of the year contender – and no mistake.