Florence Welch builds a church out of love and loss on “High as Hope”

Backstage portrait photos at Splendour in the Grass for Faster Louder. Woodfordia, Queensland 2010.

Evan Balikos/Contributing Writer

We don’t often hear songs about the effects of love on one’s mental health, their family relationships, and their overall sense of identity. “High as Hope” is the ten-track personal detailing of Florence + The Machine’s idea of love after a brutal breakup. This is an album that Florence Welch, the ever-impressive vocal powerhouse of the group, uses as therapy and recovery.

Each track uncovers more about the woman behind the microphone but keeps the spacious and often chaotic instrumentation of her music alive. Tracks like “Big God,” a shadowy and sinister piano-fueled climber, highlight the tense and towering feeling of being forgotten by the one you love.

“You need a big god/ Big enough to fill you up,” Welch desperately states on the chorus, referring to the modern relationship routine of “ghosting,” or abruptly abandoning someone.

The clever lyrical dress-up of these feelings of emptiness that Welch does in this track is a pattern of poetic poignancy on “High as Hope.” The real brilliance of this album comes from Welch’s penchant for personal, something often not seen in the lyricism of pop vocalists. The singer used a poem she had written as a template for the lead single “Hunger.” The beginning of the first verse lowers her celebrity curtain.

“At seventeen, I started to starve myself/ I thought that love was a kind of emptiness/ And at least I understood then the hunger I felt/ And I didn’t have to call it loneliness,” she sings plaintively.

“High as Hope” feels like a journey— musically and lyrically. It feels wildly organic as we listen to stirring strings and slapping percussion. In time we learn (perhaps not as much as she’d want us to) why Florence made the choice to kiss other men or take hallucinogenic drugs at her sister’s birthday party. It is not exactly the prettiest picture, and the darkly beautiful, often emotional production reflects these statements.

You can look at the “The End of Love” and its eerie opening instrumental as an audible portrait of Welch’s rise and fall, and then see her rise again as the sour violins are turned sweet. This song alone is exemplary of Welch’s show-stopping voice, and it is a blessing to hear her performance on this album be so consistently rewarding.

The album also happens to contain some of her most versatile song topics yet. “Patricia,” a dedication to famous punk vocalist Patti Smith, and “100 Years,” an at-first bleak but quickly colossal anthem, allow her to address everything from the need to feel universal love to solidarity with the #MeToo movement to her examination of her failing relationship. There are common themes that run amok in this album—love, hunger, and hope. And what Florence Welch can form musically with those themes is nothing less than extraordinary. “June,” written during the time of the tragic Pulse shooting in Orlando, FL, speaks volumes in its chorus.

“Hold on to each other/ Hold on to each other,” Welch begs of us as a wall of instrumentation containing the sounds of backing vocals, bassoon, bass, trumpets, piano, cello, violins and an emergency-alarm-mimicking synth collide.

“High as Hope” is the first album that Welch has done production for, but the notable co-producer beside her is Emile Haynie, who has worked with everyone from Kid Cudi to Father John Misty.  This happens to be one of the largest benefits of “High as Hope,” as Welch’s love of thickly-layered arrangements and Haynie’s knowledge of pop production allows for some interesting combinations of sounds, ranging from theatrical to cinematic.

On “Sky Full of Song,” the track gets bigger and builds to a rollercoaster of emotions and realizations as Welch describes herself flying high like Icarus. Haynie’s leveled production and Welch’s revealing lyrics keep the song from getting too boring or seeming too weighty.

It all ends with fourth-wall-breaking “No Choir,” a closer addressing the looming temporality of the singer’s sentiments of love. It is a masterwork that would never be heard on the radio, and a stunning rebellion to the façade of a fairy tale-love pop singers advertise and endorse daily.

Welch has never sounded more unsure of herself. She doesn’t just take off her mask, she torches it.

“But I must confess/ I did it all for myself/ I gathered you here to hide from some vast unnamable fear,” she sings referring to her favorite kind of therapy, musical performance.

It took a few listens, but once I knew the context of Welch’s lyrics and heard every string plucked, I started to appreciate “High As Hope” as a masterpiece. This is an album built off confessions and is an unadulterated look into Welch and their fight to fill their emptiness.

There are moments on this album that are magical, sometimes sad, yet every song explodes and conjures an epiphany. This album isn’t just music, it’s church.   

 

Photo taken from Flickr.

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