Florence and the Machine

Finally downloaded Florence and the Machine from iTunes; there have been a lot of female acts in the last year or so which have sort of blended in my head into something which did not fill me with enthusiasm, but for some reason I took a chance on this one. It was actually partly her version of 'You've got the love' which I got on a recent compilation (of which more separately), and an accumulation of awareness of positive buzz building in my head.

Overall, I actually really like the album, although I definetely would not go as far as love (on this Valentine's Day). I have a wariness of mad artists, and female ones in particular, and have always been slightly scared of Kate Bush, Bjork and Joanne Newsome and such like. In this regard, Florence certainly qualifies as pretty mad, with the roars and musical eccentricities and wierd instrumentation, but there remains something charming about the album and it sort of swept me up in its rush of OTT energy.

Favourites include 'Dog days are over' (love in particular the opening of the handclaps):



I also really like 'Drumming song' (the name is enough for me) and 'Howl', which strangely reminds me of Josh Ritter's 'Wolves' (something about the lupine must bring out similar rhythms in diverse artists):



Continuing the theme of her songs reminding me of unexpected folks, the guitar at the start of 'Girl with one eye' reminds me of Billy Bragg's wonderful 'Levi Stubb's tears', which made it a bizarre coincidence when a search on Youtube found a duet below between the two, on 'Fairytale of New York', in which Florence's love of the harp lends thic classic a very unusual angle:



Having wandered from the album proper into cover versions, I will end with another totally unexpected find, of her singing Wham's 'Last Christmas':



I know Christmas is long gone, and I did a piece on these songs a few weeks back, and (crucially) it is not exactly a classic to begin with it, but it is still a good cover. Maybe 2009 wasn't as bad as I recently opined for new music, and there are more Florences out there I need to go back and seek out. Maybe.