STACK #128 Jun 2016

MUSIC

COVER FEATURE

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Florence + the Machine’s new album How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful is about learning to love life as you find it. By Jonathan Alley

I magine being an internationally recognised pop star at 21. Sounds great, doesn’t it? The world at your feet, parties,

fame, travelling the world, doors opening to corners of possibility, of which teenage you never dared dream. The reality, of course, is different. 21 year olds (famous or no) have plenty of living to do, and plenty of life to work out for themselves.

I thought it was about a relationship. I realised it was about a relationship I was having with myself.

Doing that in the full glare of public opinion

– particularly with the 100- fold amplification of social media turned on your life 24/7 – really isn’t that much fun. Florence Welch, AKA Florence of

Florence + the Machine, knows about the pitfalls of trying to live a private life in a public world all too well. While Florence + the Machine is a band (‘the machine’ was a teenage in-joke shared with bandmate Isabella Summers), the inevitable light of public attitude shines lightest and longest on the woman who shares the group’s name. After touring 2011’s Ceremonials, Florence went to ground for some time; she changed her living situation, and while hardly becoming a hermit, she did her best to forget about the demands of her music career. “Did I want to carry on the whirlwind of touring? Or did I need some time, to read and reflect?“ she ruminates. “I think I was caught between those two completely polar opposites. Like, being on my kitchen table at 11am, or... just wanting to be quiet and read?“ The resulting album christened How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful is freshly available to ears in time for the upcoming Florence + the Machine shows at Splendour in the Grass in July; it's a fairly personal affair that, while inevitably tied up in metaphor, processes a

love is never very far away; while certain songs or song titles (What Kind of Man? springs to mind) allude to themes of the heart, the album inevitably revealed itself as being about all the things simmering away under the surface. “I thought it was about a relationship and then as I’ve listened to it and gone through it, I realised

life spent in the sealed bubble of the touring experience, looking back at various events of elation, madness, blow outs and triumphs. “It is a very personal record,” she concurs. “I thought it was about one thing and then… it’s turned out to be about so many different things.” Of course in the songwriting game,

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