Let’s talk about
magic. Because music, at its best, is a kind of magic
that lifts you up and takes you somewhere else. “I
want my music to sound like throwing yourself out of
a tree, or off a tall building, or as if you’re
being sucked down into the ocean and you can’t
breathe,” says Florence Welch. “It’s
something overwhelming and all-encompassing that fills
you up, and you’re either going to explode with
it, or you’re just going to disappear.”
Florence writes her best songs when she’s drunk
or has a hangover, because that’s when the freedom,
the feral music comes, creating itself wildly from the
fragments gathered in her notebooks and in her head.
“You’re lucid,” she explains, “but
you’re not really there. You’re floating
through your own thoughts, and you can pick out what
you need. I like those weird connections in the universe.
I feel that life’s like a consistent acid trip,
those times when things keep coming back.”
Florence herself is a mass of contradictions: she’s
tough yet she’s terrified, a bundle of nerves
and passion, of darkness and pure joy. “I feel
things quite intensely, which is why the music has to
be so intense. I’m either really sad or really
happy, I’m tired or completely manic. That’s
when I’m at my most creative, but it’s also
dangerous for me. I feel I could write some good songs,
or break some hearts. Or tables. Or glasses.”
As a performer she can seem fearless, but she’s
also far too quick to pass judgement on herself. This
is the woman, after all who got into Camberwell art
college by making a huge floral sign telling herself
‘You are a twat.’ She says she’s a
geek, who loses all control when in love. She’s
also something increasingly rare and precious in a time
of karaoke pop: an artist who has found her own, authentic
voice.
Her soaring, epic vocals, quirky melodies and self-contained
musical world have already won her the 2009 Critics
Choice Award at the Brits. Some compare her to Kate
Bush. You’ll also find touches of Tom Waits and
Nick Cave in her dark visions, and if you heard a little
of Bjork too, she’d find it a compliment. But
mainly, Florence is out on her own: an exhilarating
place to be, she points out, but also a little scary.
Her debut album ‘Lungs’ is made of harps,
choirs, drums, elevator shafts, bits of metal, love,
death, fireworks, string quartets, stamping, sighing,
strange electronic wailing, lambs, lions, sick, broken
glass, blood, moon, stars, drink, coffins, teeth, water,
wedding dresses.. and the silences in between. The songs
are full of Gothic imagery, of fairytale flights of
fantasy, and although much has been read into her lyrics,
Florence says it’s usually simple. “Everything
is about boys!” she laughs. “The whole album
is about love – and pain. People see my lyrics
as crazy, but to me it’s an honest, heartfelt
album. I didn’t set out to be wacky. I just want
it to be emotive.”
Florence grew up in Camberwell, south London, the oldest
of three children. One of her earliest musical memories
is standing on top of the trunk where her dad kept his
vinyl collection, dancing with him to the Rolling Stones.
She started singing along to Nina Simone and Dusty Springfield
at home, expanded her vocal range with arias, then became
a pre-teen skatepunk before getting into drum’n’bass
and dance music at squat parties. It’s an eclectic
mix, but for her, the common thread is always the emotion.
“Anything that has real feeling in it always excites
me. Sam Cooke’s ‘A Change is Going To Come’,
Eva Cassidy singing ‘Wade In The Water’,
even Rhianna’s ‘Umbrella’ –
I’m obsessed with music. I’ll play Beyonce,
Lil Wayne, Bob Dylan’s ‘Hurricane’,
Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Going Down’.
I can’t stay in one place or genre. That’s
why I had to make my own genre.”
After her parents had separated, her mum fell in love
with one of their neighbours. The two families moved
in together and at the age of 13, Florence was suddenly
one of six teenagers “I grew up in a weird brady
bunch family, it was more like a tribe of teenagers
than a regular upbringing. I had to share a room with
my sister and my little brother had to sleep in a cupboard!
Now, it’s nice having a big family. But then,
it was a completely fraught environment. No wonder I
went off the rails, because there was never any space
at home. In that sort of situation, you have to become
an individual.”
Florence found her own space by going out to clubs and
pubs, by singing onstage and in her bedroom. By the
time she left school, she’d already written songs
like ‘Kiss With A Fist’, and knew she wanted
to make music but not how to go about it. So after a
year working behind a bar she went to art school, making
tents under the desk to sleep off her hangovers while
trying to convince her tutors she was an installation.
It wasn’t until she wrote the haunting ‘Between
Two Lungs’ that it all came together. Instead
of percussion, Florence pounded the studio walls with
her hands. She built the melody on the piano even though
it’s not an instrument she knows how to play,
and recorded the backing vocals first, before writing
the top line. It’s bonkers and totally unconventional,
but of course it is also glorious – a strange
but yearning song about losing yourself in love. “I’d
found my voice, and I just felt euphoric,” she
recalls. “It’s been a real process of me
learning that the way I wanted to do it was actually
the right way. This whole album has been about having
faith in myself.”
As for The Machine, it’s a flexible beast. It
can go right down to Florence and a drum kit or a piano,
but right now it’s a seven-piece band including
long-term collaborators Rob Ackroyd (guitar), Chris
Hayden (drums), Isabella Summers (keyboards) and Tom
Monger (harp). “I’ve worked with most of
them for a long time and they know my style, know the
way I write, they know what I want.”
Live, Florence and The Machine become an entirely different
beast. No two performances are ever alike, and clad
in clothes often culled from local second-hand shops
that day, Florence goes at it like a woman possessed.
“It’s just this sense of total freedom,”
she says. “It sounds so cheesy, but I want to
touch people. Not in a weird way. I just want to help
them feel what I’m feeling.”
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