Review Summary: maybe I've always been more comfortable in chaos
‘Melodramatic’ has always been a tag that’s followed Florence Welch throughout her entire career, but that’s always been a harsh and misleading word for what Welch does.
How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful comes after a chaotic time for Florence, a time of breakdowns and relationship struggles. And to call Florence reveling in the catharsis her massive sound offers her ‘melodramatic’ is to offer a great disservice to all she manages to do.
Florence and her Machine’s music has always been theatrical, no doubt. But songs like
Rabbit Heart and
What The Water Gave Me needed to be big to contain all the thematic content of Renaissance artistry, Virginia Woolf and religious imagery Welch loved to shove in. Welch has said
How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful is her most personal record yet, and thus the music is appropriately big to contain all the emotion therein, and for it to come out in moments of affirmative catharsis and self-encouragement.
As a first single,
What Kind Of Man couldn’t be more fitting. Its position as the second song on the album, after
Ship To Wreck’s mid-paced soft rock arrangements, comes off as admittedly jarring but that’s by the by.
What Kind Of Man starts off with Florence’s modified vocals against a ghostly choir, lamenting over a man who takes no part in their relationship. But Florence then takes this hurt that her man has delivered her, and smashes it against stomping glam guitars, thundering drums and “Ride Of The Valkyries”-brass and gospel. Florence’s vocals soar as always, but this time they’re barbed, fiery; "You do such damage, how do you manage?/Tryna crawl in back for more”. The back-up vocals confirm Florence’s hurt as they emphasise how her back is ‘always against the wall’. In a career defined by defiant, massive songs,
What Kind Of Man is Florence at her most defiant, righteous and angry.
Elsewhere on
How Big…, Florence takes her trauma and absolutely runs with it. The title track is an energetic pop rock number that ends up soaring into space on a raft of beautiful brass instrumentation that Florence has described as “what love feels like”.
Queen Of Peace is a stomping glam-pop piece that paints Florence as a repeat survivor; war-like trumpets answer Florence’s call of “Oh, what is it worth? All that’s left is hurt”. But she doesn’t let it swallow her.
Various Storms & Saints allows a moment of reflection, as Florence sits among clouds of plaintive orchestration and talks to herself: “don’t make the mountain your enemy/get out, get up there instead”, before
Delilah announces that Florence is “gonna be free and gonna be fine” until it erupts into massive piano chords and Florence’s impressive falsetto, dragging her chains and her hurt and dancing with them until the song breaks apart and Florence is left stronger for it.
Long & Lost and
Caught are slower numbers, the former finding Florence literally “lost in the fog” of the murky, subdued arrangement as she wonders if she can ever find herself again, her vocals more pronounced and ghostly than ever before; whereas
Caught’s pop-soul style has Florence trying to confirm her pain to herself.
Florence’s trauma is finally realised in the last third of the album, as the absolutely glorious
Third Eye has her soaring voice declaring “you are flesh and blood/And you deserve to be loved”. It’s a beautiful moment as the instrumentation is perfectly organised to tug the listener into Florence’s world and realise that she’s talking to you as much as she is herself, and we are caught in a moment of solidarity with her, as she admits to trying to change, to adjust, to survive. But everything’s going to be okay. Florence is "learning” and “leaving” in
St. Jude, the song existing in a single moment of time as she says “maybe I’ve always been more comfortable in chaos”.
St. Jude is the calm before the storm, as Florence gives herself one last chance to consider her trauma before the album’s closer, and the last moment to dwell. In
Mother, she is finally grounded, longing for autumn so she can shed herself of her painful past and just ***ing live. And she does, the
Screamadelica-esque dance-psych giving a way to an utterly astounding moment when dark, dirty, guitar buzz has Florence soaring above everything, as “heaven trembles, fallen at our feet”. Her voice leaves everything behind in a storm so beautiful that nothing before remains.
Everyone has ways of dealing with trauma.
How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful has Florence revelling in it, making beauty out of it that is as at times fiery, at times heavenly, and always defiant; before she ***s off and leaves it dead in the ground.
Lungs and
Ceremonials were fantastic records that were troubled by Florence’s lack of ground in making all her otherworldly themes stick.
How Big… finds her at her most pained and personal, but she runs with it, making a record that will hopefully be as important and affirming as it is for others as it for her.
