Review: Florence Is Chill As Hell In High As Hope
© Micah Veldkamp, 2018
Florence is unlike any other artist in today’s music scene. Lead singer Florence Welch is cut from the same ethereal cloth as Enya, and her dramatization and costuming occasionally harkens back to Bjork, but her voice booms with the power of Annie Lennox.
In other words, she almost seems to belong in the wrong decade, but I sure am glad we got her. Few of today’s artists or bands hit me as heard in the heartstrings and eardrums simultaneously.
The point is, here, that Florence + The Machine has set a precedent with their sound, a precedent of orchestral, arena alt-rock that’s as evocative as it is contemplative. Thus, though there is nothing abnormal about their latest album High As Hope, that normality itself feels strange.
Top to bottom, High As Hope introduces us to a more muted, chill Florence. This is evident from the very first track “June,” which is a slow build towards a crescendo, which is familiar, but even the crescendo feels like less of a swell than tracks past.
“Hunger,” the lead single, comes next. It is probably Flo + The Mo’s weakest lead single of any of her albums, but that truly is praising with faint damnation; between “What Kind Of Man,” “Shake It Out,” and “Dog Days Are Over,” it had some tough acts to follow. It’s repetitious, and its production feels a little contrived. But I have to say it also gets better the more you listen to it, and Florence’s lyricism, repetitive as it may be, is forceful, drawing parallels between her teenage eating disorder and the universal hunger for some deep fulfillment.
The real home-run stretch comes at Tracks 4-6. “Big God,” the most recent single released is a haunting and intense melody. The song itself is about a love interest that ghosted her (for you old fogies, that means “inexplicably broke off all communication”), but also how that emptiness inside of her has caused her to think about the unfillable hole in the soul one has, one that could only be filled by a “big god.” This is what sets Florence apart from someone like Taylor Swift; her jilted lover act is dramatic, but it’s because her angst has set off some seriously dramatic, profound contemplation, so much so that the percussive, moody instrumentation feels warranted.
Next comes “Sky Full Of Song”, a light, beautiful chaser to the previous track. Backed only by some light strings, Florence sings about the struggle between the endorphin rush performing is for her, and the physical and emotional toll she undergoes.
Closing out that key stretch is “Grace,” which upon the first two listens, is undoubtedly the best song of the album. The titular Grace is the lead singer’s real-life younger sister, and this is essentially a grand apology to her. Florence mentioned in several interviews that despite being older, she has always felt like the little sister because of how much Grace looked after and cared for her. This quote is worth reading:
“Grace— my sister —was literally like, ‘what the fuck? You put me through all that, now this? You could’ve just told me you loved me. You don’t have to be so English about it, then go make a pop song out of it.’ I have huge feelings for her; she’s such an important person in my life, but there’s no way we could sit down in front of each other and go 'I love you so much.' But our family is riddled with intimacy issues. We’re terrible at being told we’re loved and telling people we love them.”
It’s a loud, powerhouse of a chorus, coupled with an aching heartfelt verse. And can we talk about how that piano part sounds like something straight out of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy? As my introduction may have belied, it perhaps comes as no surprise that my favorite song from the album is the one song that sounds as if it belongs on Ceremonials or How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful.
Apart from that stretch of three songs, though, this record’s pace is considerably slower, its volume lower, its tracks slightly more acoustic than ever before. That’s not an inherently bad thing, although it feels anticlimactic. I like the way Andrew Trendell of NME put it: “Free of too many bells, whistles and a contrived sense of scale, [Florence is] free to be herself more so than ever before. Stripped to the bare bones of her soul and the sentiment, her truth shines – and there’s a beauty in that. The only thing holding it back is a lack of risk”.
I do feel as if High As Hope is short on standout tracks, but it’d be a mischaracterization to act as if it has any glaring bad or weak tracks. Because it doesn’t— my least favorite songs on the album aren’t bad at all, just…different. Change is often a positive thing, and that certainly can apply to our favorite musicians and bands.
But damn if I don’t miss the old Florence, who would take you by the hand, fly you out to the cosmos, and punch you in the gut. That High As Hope doesn’t command your attention from the jump the way its two predecessors did isn’t an indictment on its quality, but it is, to be fair, perhaps a statement on its shelf life.