Introduction
On the whole, Ceremonials is a big, bombastic album. It focuses on nostalgia, water, love, and is more polished and refined than Lungs. There is a problem though - the scale, the musical intensity of this album does not let you rest for a single moment. It is a constant bombardment of emotion, layered meaning, and atmospherics.
It is theatrical, not only in its performance, but in its over-the-top lyrical presentation and delivery. That is far from a bad thing. This is an album that sounds like a church. There's choirs, bells, harps. Then there's the service you must attend, in listening to thing.
Only If For a Night
Is a song about memories And I had a dream / about my old school; and a song about being haunted. Perhaps by a literal ghost, perhaps by a spectre of thought. There is a lot of visual information conveyed in the song, and a hint toward the album's theme dancing on tiptoes, my own secret ceremonials.
If these are secret ceremonies, then they've very much failed. The tracks on this album are well known hits in most corners of the Earth, and they have been performed many times over, not just for a night.
A thought crosses my mind - is it perhaps a song about a one night stand? Surely not, but perhaps it is a song about mourning Before the service began / In the graveyard doing handstands. What an image. It quickly gives way, backed by a choir.
Shake It Out
What a world we live in, to have two absolute banger songs with the same title. I don't care if TayTay came first, or Florence did. This track is one about self reflection and regret, and after however many countless listens, it is only just now that the I like to keep my issues drawn - has its meaning revealed to me. Don't look in. The curtains are closed.
The one flaw of this album so far reveals itself, however. With a heavy reliance on repetition to end songs. Perhaps that is dragging that horse around, but it is clear that there is a desperation for hope expressed in this song, and of surrender to uncertainty.
Musically there's pounding drums and tribalism, but the focus is always on the voice. In the choir, and in the layered tracks of various vocalisations.
What the Water Gave Me
And here we go again, another song about water. One of Florence's favourite topics to sing about. This is a place where she goes straight to the point. It is a song about Ophelia, plain and true. She is perhaps singing to her self. Lay me down, let the only sound / Be The Overflow, Pockets full of stones.
A song about drowning. A song about wanting to exit the world. It is beautiful, atmospheric, and relentless. She also touches upon not only the myth of Ophelia, but too, of Atlas, who carried the largest stone of them all upon his back.
This song is certainly consistent with the album so far, it too ending with repetitious lyrics.
Never Let Me Go
This is still a song about water, and could well be a direct continuation of the prior track. It is a song about under things. Presumably, under soil, until it is revealed that it a thousand miles to the sea floor, and the arms of the ocean are carrying me.
This is a song about loss, and makes me think about of what @riverflows perhaps feels, sitting in the sea, thinking on her lost father. Never let me go, never let me go echoes through this song.
I am not a swimmer, or terribly fond of the ocean, but this song gives me a salty taste of that vast, untameable soup, cherished, respected, and deeper than we can fathom. On queue, this song, too, like all the others, offers up a chanting hymn toward the end, repetitious and reinforcing. In her own words, Not giving up, just giving in.
Breaking Down
So, with that interpretation out of the way, we move straight into a song that is entirely composed in a tearful, minor-chord driven piano number called Breaking Down. Again.
I cannot tell if this is a song about anxiety, depression, or both. Perhaps even, addiction. At the same time, it could be a song about unknowable fears and anxieties - being not afraid of the dark, but being afraid of everything that we don't know. It is a slower paced song, calmer, quieter, than the rest, and the piano is beautifully isolated against the strings, supported by almost delicate percussion.
Its a gorgeous song, one that would be a lot of fun to play on the Piano, I think. Perhaps I will have to learn the melody.
Lover to Lover
This is a song about hedonistic lovemaking, with many different partners and hitting the highest possible note, while transitioning smoothly into a new groove. It is an anthemic track, full with a powerful chorus, and a bridge that travels from road to road / bed to bed / black to red.
The album's repetitious nature is perhaps most powerful on this track, with an almost recursive
Lover to lover, to lover to lover
To lover to lover, to lover to lover
To lover to lover, to lover to lover
If it wasn't for the promiscuousness of this track, you wouldn't think it odd to hear Aretha Franklin singing it, full belt, full chested.
No Light, No Light
Then once again, into the dissonant darkness. Minor keys open up the song, and Welch uses head-voice to bring us into a quiet, ambient world, lulling us into something. I love the line in the first part of this song "You are the silence between".
However, this is a song that isn't sung to you, the listener, but to some forgotten memory, a forgotten lover, perhaps, or an ideal of a lover. This is a song that starts slowly, and then takes us, somehow, by the hand, on a frenetic journey of metaphor, loss, and it is hard to keep up. You become lost in the flow of time, as more and more beautiful lines which end with a request:
Tell me what you want me to say. This final line, though repeated throughout the song, is haunting. There needs to be a choice, but the choice is perhaps that of the other, and not of the self. This is likely my favourite track on this album. It isn't necessarily "fun", but You can't choose what stays and what fades away.
Oh, and sweeping harps. Beautiful. Then, there's even some sinister sounding bass. It is just perfect - but, plays on the repeating nature of this album, even in the title itself.
Seven Devils
Seven Devils is an attempt at intimidation. Bold drums. A threat of burning down a kingdom. Of useless holy water, and of hunting down someone (or something) which has wronged. With no regard for self preservation, this song marches on, and I am not sure if it is trying to put me in its victim's shoes, or whether Welch plans to go out with song, to be dead before the day is done.
This song holds a complex musical structure, conflict is never fully resolved, and the percussions goes from deep bass to gentle, crashing cymbals. It is an eerie atmosphere, with ghostly echoes throughout the layered background.
Heartlines
Another song about water, and death by drowning. They're coming at a rate of knots now. This album could have just been called water, and would have had the same impact. Perhaps that will be Welch's next album.
This song is properly tribal. Whispered vocalisations, head voice, chest voice, and belts, all at once, and crazy, unrelenting harps that follow complex patterns. It is also a song about going home. Whatever that is, wherever it is. If this song was released in the 70s, it would have been so widely loved and adored, we'd have covers of it today.
Very hippy (not happy) - and lines that are hard to penetrate up against the wall on a Wednesday afternoon?
Spectrum (Say My Name)
Then we have the big hit of the album. Played so many times. On so many mediums. In so many forms. This is a love song, in my reckoning. However, the lyrical variety in this song is not... present.
The repetitious chanting is interrupted only by brief verses. It is a tribal song, like the others, but could just as well also be about the Spanish Inquisition. (Did you expect that?) It's a good song, but certainly not my favourite.
All This and Heaven Too
The first verse of this song is about the pain of existing. And of writing about that existence, and trying to balance the head and the heart, and language. Then the chorus makes me feel utterly hopeless and lost, I've been scrawling it forever, but it never makes sense to me at all.
There are many topics that make me feel that way. Things I've tried to write so many countless times, that go unresolved to my own satisfaction. Things that I will keep writing. Things that I get Caught on (not to spoil a track from a future Florence album) - but this ... this track, is a place where the repetition of word, and verse, and chorus - works so well.
Trying to figure something out, but doing the same thing, over and over. Perhaps we need to go back to Breaking Down , just in a slightly different form. This is probably my second favourite track on the album, but I didn't know it, until I sat down to write this. Words were never so useful - so I was screaming out a language that I never knew existed before.
Leave My Body
The final track of the album starts quietly. It starts in similar style to Seven Devils. Its a threat. It is a song that is about veneration, hedonism, and perhaps, amazing sexual encounters. That may be a massive misread, but I don't need a husband, don't need no wife gives a vague clue. There is also a beautiful poeticism about living as literally in moement as possible:
I don't want your future
I don't need your past
One Bright moment
Is All I ask.
This song is a bright moment. Yet, it tugs on le petit mort, the little death; but it somehow, through its choirs, domineering, yet tame drums, sounds like, much of this album, a thing you would hear only in the cathedrals of the a cult that Welch could no doubt lead.
Conclusions
This album isn't my favourite Florence album. It is musically dense and complex, a real progression into her finding a style that suits her song writing and storytelling - bold, large, ambitious soundscapes that need to be listened to as though they are ritual and worship, all at once.
It is intentional, and your participation in it should be too, lest you become an onlooker with which this doesn't resonate.
BANGERS
No Light, No Light
All This and Heaven Too
Never Let Me Go