It seemed at time last year that the British music industry was simply desperate for Florence Welch to succeed last year, she was talked up as the Next Big Thing since around 1987, and all through 2008 as she released a handful of raw and uncommercial singles, they thrust a Brit award at her early this year and named her top of nearly every embarrassingly titled ‘pones to look out for’ polls (along the lines off ‘Tha Freshest Cold Meats Slammed On Tha Counter xx09xx’. That one was on Blue Peter.) and when her debut was finally released in July it was named on the Mercury shortlist within approximately seventy eight seconds, suggesting that it would’ve been nominated even if all it consisted of was recordings of Florence performing her favourite Eddie Large stand-up routines while riding a mechanical bull.
Thankfully Lungs contains enough brilliance to just about justify the cement mixer full of hype that it has been saddled with (hey, it’s my list and I can mix as many metaphors as I want to thank you very much), even if ultimately it’s a debut that promises a potentially great career rather than a truly great album in its own right. The album’s highs are generally wonderful enough to paper over its occasional duds, and it’s always great to see an artist as wonderfully odd as Florence Welch- both in her slightly leftfield musical style and wonderfully odd and occasionally grotesque lyrical imagery- getting such mainstream attention. there aren’t many albums with a better opening one-two than the singles ‘Dog Days are Over’ and ‘Rabbit Foot (Raise It Up)’ (how on God’s green earth did that only limp to number 12 in the charts?! This is a country that gave The Black Eyed Peas two number one singles this year for fuck’s sake), and ‘Howl’ and ‘Hurricane Drunk’ are hit singles in anything resembling a sane world. You know you’re at least partially onto a winner when you have the chutzpah to cover one of the greatest dance songs of the last 25 years (The Source and Candi Staton’s ‘You Got The Love’) and manage not to make it a complete affront to all that’s holy.
There are a few misfires though, ‘Kiss With a Fist’ is a slightly cack-handed White Stripes pastiche that sounds out of place (unsurprisingly, as it was originally released as a single more than a year before the album came out) and disrupts the albums flow, and ‘Girl With One Eye’ ramps the drama up to such ridiculously portentous levels that it makes the last night of the proms sound like a Steve Albini production. In future Florence may also like to consider a dash of subtly every now and then, her singing style, although impressive, only seems to have two settings- ‘belting’ and ‘Shirley Bassey’, and her habit of finishing each and every song by singing the chorus one more time but even louder begins to grate by the albums close.
Debut albums aren’t meant to be perfect though, and these are relatively minor quibbles. As a first taste engineered to make you eagerly await her next move, Lungs does its job to perfection.
Thankfully Lungs contains enough brilliance to just about justify the cement mixer full of hype that it has been saddled with (hey, it’s my list and I can mix as many metaphors as I want to thank you very much), even if ultimately it’s a debut that promises a potentially great career rather than a truly great album in its own right. The album’s highs are generally wonderful enough to paper over its occasional duds, and it’s always great to see an artist as wonderfully odd as Florence Welch- both in her slightly leftfield musical style and wonderfully odd and occasionally grotesque lyrical imagery- getting such mainstream attention. there aren’t many albums with a better opening one-two than the singles ‘Dog Days are Over’ and ‘Rabbit Foot (Raise It Up)’ (how on God’s green earth did that only limp to number 12 in the charts?! This is a country that gave The Black Eyed Peas two number one singles this year for fuck’s sake), and ‘Howl’ and ‘Hurricane Drunk’ are hit singles in anything resembling a sane world. You know you’re at least partially onto a winner when you have the chutzpah to cover one of the greatest dance songs of the last 25 years (The Source and Candi Staton’s ‘You Got The Love’) and manage not to make it a complete affront to all that’s holy.
There are a few misfires though, ‘Kiss With a Fist’ is a slightly cack-handed White Stripes pastiche that sounds out of place (unsurprisingly, as it was originally released as a single more than a year before the album came out) and disrupts the albums flow, and ‘Girl With One Eye’ ramps the drama up to such ridiculously portentous levels that it makes the last night of the proms sound like a Steve Albini production. In future Florence may also like to consider a dash of subtly every now and then, her singing style, although impressive, only seems to have two settings- ‘belting’ and ‘Shirley Bassey’, and her habit of finishing each and every song by singing the chorus one more time but even louder begins to grate by the albums close.
Debut albums aren’t meant to be perfect though, and these are relatively minor quibbles. As a first taste engineered to make you eagerly await her next move, Lungs does its job to perfection.
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