Happiness hit her, like a train on a track
This is not the introduction you would expect from the likes of Florence Welsh and her masterful music produced on the album Lungs. I've been a "fan" of Florence and The Machine for some time now, but I've never stopped to try and think why.
So as a result, I am going to be revisiting their albums in a bid to try and understand the music on a deeper level. Not only do I own the CDs, but I have have many of the song books, and a mediocre understanding of musical theory.
Dog Days Are Over
The driving pattern of the first track Dog Days Are Over, a well known hit, start in G, Progress to A, and end in E. I am unsure why, but I always find pleasure in the A note, more than any of the others. In the minor keys, it is even nicer, as is the progression sits against ironic lyrics about a girl trying to run away from responsibility, struggle, and death. It has an open ending lyrical meaning, which changes depending on the mood you're in when listening.
I've listened to this album while I've been happy. I've listened to it when I'm sad. I've listened to it when I'm angry. When I'm calm. When I'm anxious. Each time, it has taken on different meanings. Every time, it has resulted in one thing - cacophonous noise bending my emotion.
Rabbit Heart (Raise it Up)
I had never truly studied the lyrics to the following track, Rabbit Heart (Raise it Up), and I have to say... wow. The sense of myth and sacrifice in this track is extraordinary. To quote the lyrics quite plainly, This is a gift. A song that like the first, Uses a bunch of A (again in minor) - possibly an ongoing reason as to my attraction to this music, I cannot place the please the A chord and key brings me in music! and is filled with atmosphere and sonic depth. It sounds like a hymn sung in question, as opposed to in reverence.
I'm not calling you a liar
The next track changes the stakes. I'm not calling you a liar is down beat, down tempo, and full of denial. The songwriting (particularly the lyrical elements) are a big part of my adoration for the work of Florence and the Machine. There is historical reference to mythological figures, ethereal backing vocals, self-doubt, surrender, harps, and meaning that does not hide behind metaphor. There's always a build into a crescendo, even if it stays quiet, suppressed in the background against Welch's mournful and just-below strained singing.
Howl
She is the strongest organ in the machine. She pretends to be an owl in the following track, Howl. Not literally. It is a song that turns Welch into a fierce hunter. A hunter in love, as the lyrics so plainly state:
Be careful of the curse that falls on young lovers
Starts so soft and sweet and turns them into hunters
And later in the track: The Fabric of your flesh, pure as a wedding dress. It is a pumping track, the irrepressible beat of a bass and tom forming a hypnotic beat, opposing the flowing, hypnotic vocals. It is a beautiful track, that leaves you haunted. Lovers as predators. I hunt for you with bloody feet across the hallowed ground. It is gorgeous.
Kiss With a Fist
The shortest track on the album follows, and it is a song about violent love, of domestic frustration, of escalation and vengeance - it begins quickly, lasts a short time, and is over before you know it - as most toxic relationships ought to be. But - its upbeat. It isn't a mournful dirge, and that is probably what makes it catchy.
The mood couldn't possibly diverge further with the start of the next tracks.
Girl With One Eye
Hopefully not an outcome of the prior song, but quite possibly the case, this song is a meandering, threatening song, with some eerie instrumentation. While Welch sings it, it feels as though it is a song written from the male perspective. It is a confronting song, with vivid imagery of removing an eye, slipping a hand under a skirt, and a suggestion that you sleep with one eye open.
It is a hard track, and I don't think I'm alone in that view, given the play counts of the track on an individual basis.
Drumming Song
This isn't a song about drums. It has a lot of percussion, layered; which makes a full sound, but it is a song about a beating heart. About a mission. About a goal. About a person.
As I move my feet towards your body
I can hear this beat, it fills my head up
And gets louder and louder
This is also probably one of the first tracks that Florence starts to sing about water, and being completely and utterly overwhelmed by its force. It both nourishes and has the potential to destroy us. It is the beginning of a deep, re-occurring theme in her song writing. And for some reason, this song, too, leans heavily on chords of A.
But how does it all make me feel? That is all that matters with Art, with music, with the "unimportant" things that are in fact, more important than we give them credit for.
So far, this album has made me feel whimsy, joy, fear and something of wanting to endure and survive against all odds. That is certainly something that resonates with the next track.
Between Two Lungs
This could be a song about sharing a kiss, sharing words, or the way in which our breath gives form to our thoughts. How our lungs are merely a mode of correspondence as well as of our enduring life. This is a song that rushes along at a rapid pace. It has a lot going on in the background, and even more in the foreground, as the tempo drives the song to its conclusion.
It is breathy, and over (even at four minutes and nine seconds in length) too soon , much like our lives - short and fleeting.
Cosmic Love
This is a song about quantum mechanics and the heat death of the universe. At least that is how I feel about it. I absolutely love the lyrical structure and progression through these lines. They're hypnotism, that force you you to continue listening, almost against your will:
The stars, the moon
They have all been blown out
You've left me in the dark
No dawn, no day
I'm always in this twilight
Inadvertently, I was not thinking about this song when I was writing my short story, Atomic Origins, but there's definitely a quantumly entangled link present between these two pieces of creative media.
This is a beautiful song, and is probably my favourite on the album so far. It is sonically deep, with layered lyrics, increasing tension through the use of strings and drums, pushing an unresolved melody constantly forward. It swings and it swoops, and the use of the harp makes it feel like a dream, full of provocation to rapidly move one's eyes as the music moves from channel to channel.
However, it isn't a very accessible song. That's a weakness. But I can access it, and I draw great pleasure from its arrangement and the longing it speaks of.
My Boy Builds Coffins
If Cosmic Love is my favourite song on this album, then My Boy Builds Coffins must be the second. This is a song about death. About death being a great equalisier, an uneventful event, and I absolutely love the complex, almost writhing melody of guitar and piano. It is all mixed together in an "onward" theme.
It is a simple story about a boy, who, would you guess, build coffins. He's made one for himself, one for me too.
One of these days, he'll make one for you.
Then . ... for you is repeated several times, in an extended, haunting, ghostly tone, as the tempo drops. Stop and meditate on your own death a while, and you will be rewarded, until it's thrown in the ground, it just isn't fair.
As much as it is as a song to tell you (in case you haven't realised it already) - that you're going to die one day - it somehow tells you that enjoying your life is an important thing to do, because when we're gone, we're gone.
Hurricane Drunk
And that goes straight into this track. Probably a self-destructive party anthem at its surface, I'm going out, I'm gonna drink myself to death, where Welch sees an old lover. But in that moment of confrontation, of the pain of history, there still lies hope - at least things can't get any worse.
This song is very accessible lyrically, and to anyone who's gone out on a bender - who hasn't? These are all thoughts and feelings most people have had at some point in their life. Not necessarily triggered by a certain individual, but perhaps by circumstance.
But then, again, come the harps. And the silence of the rest of the instruments - until I never felt so alive, and so dead, and the cycle of drinking and partying (as a form of self destruction) comes full circle.
And, the line I'm going out, fades into nothing, taking on a sinister double meaning. This is an anthem of self destruction, but yet, also of the duality of joy and le petit mort - the little deaths that we allow ourselves to have in love and life.
It now strikes me that the track order of this album is rather fucking masterful. While there is no notion that this is a concept album, designed to be read from start to finish - it does have an over-arching narrative, which continues in the blinding (literally) light of dawn.
Blinding
It starts with the caw of a bird, and screams. You have to listen closely, though, before the song truly gets underway, with a dissonant tone, and, again with the harp, and the rustling of grasses, before the drums come in, and the song truly gets underway:
No more dreaming of the dead as if death itself was undone
No more dreaming calling like a crow for a boy, for a body in the garden
This is an interesting, and uncomfortable song, when you listen to everything that is going on in the background. There's a lot layers. They're intentionally placed, and almost follow the lyrics as though punctuating the lyrics. This is a song that seems to sit between sleep and wakefulness, and of the feeling you might have when you open your eyes knowing that what you see may not make any sense. It makes me ask the question, is closing your eyes to sleep just a way to open your eyes to dream? Particularly, so, with a sequence of lines like:
Snow White's stitching up your circuit boards
Synapse slipping through the hidden door
This song fills me with wonder. Not hope, not fear, but just an abstract sense of wonder.
You've Got The Love
I've probably heard this song thousands of times. It has been used in advertising, it's been a radio hit. It's accessible. Its easy. It isn't complex. It is simply about standing by someone when no one else would. It isn't even really a love song - I don't think. I think it is just a song about friends.
Bird Song
This isn't a song that is just birds singing. I am sure some artists have done that, but not Florence. Not yet. This is a song about a bird tormenting someone. It is just like The Telltale Heart, but instead, about a bird.
Here, Welech channels the literary great, Edgar Allan Poe very strongly, and describes the transformation of one from human to bird. Perhaps it is self referential, prophetic of her career as a performer. Or, perhaps more absurdly, it is a song about twitter.
But, my composure, and inability to accept Welch as an oracle believes this is a clear and obvious reference to Poe's work, and it is a powerful ending to an album.
In Conclusion
Lungs is an album all about love, loss, self destruction, reflection, and is an interesting debut. There's accessible tracks. There's complex, musically dense arrangements, and then there's the massive commercial success that this album had, selling multiple millions of copies.
It isn't quite pop music. It isn't quite folk music. It isn't alternative, but it sits in a genre of its own. I'm looking forward to analysing the other albums by Florence and the Machine, and can't wait to carve out the lists of my favourite tracks. From this album, they're easy to pick:
- Cosmic Love
- My Boy Builds Coffins
- Hurricane Drunk (because who doesn't love the idea of hedonistic self destruction every now and then?)
Released in 2009, and remastered a few times since then, Lungs is still accessible, and a great album. You can listen to it on YouTube.