A little while back, Florence Welch needed a vacation. She’d gone on a world tour and had developed some vocal problems because of it. So, as she explained to the music press in 2012, she was taking a year off.
And what a year that must’ve been. Without going into details, Welch claimed she fell apart during that break and had some sort of breakdown. The year off turned into more than that; between 2012 and 2015, the only new Florence + the Machine music was a small contribution to The Great Gatsby soundtrack. But as we hit June of 2015, nearly three years after Welch said she was taking a year off, she’s back with a vengeance, packing a strong batch of songs about being a mess.
How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful is a record that’s damaged and angry, self-destructive and assertive. It swells with strings and horns and has some of the best, crunchiest guitar riffs I’ve heard all year. It keeps reminding me of Los Angeles but was recorded in England. It’s a mess, but it’s polished and clean. It’s bipolar and its pretty good stuff.
Anytime someone opens a record with a line like “Don’t touch the sleeping pills, they mess with my head,” you know something’s gone awry. On “Ship to Wreck” Welch describes a druggy, confused existence. She worries she’s losing touch with reality and describes visions of sharks or being buried alive. There’s even blackouts: “Oh, my love, remind me, what it was it that I did?” Indeed, in an interview with NME, Welch explained she’s had “an on and off relationship with drinking.”
The video takes it a step further: Welch explodes during a family dinner, jumping onto the table. Elsewhere, she fights with herself, and tries to embrace her boyfriend, but they keep their arms ramrod straight and shove each other away.
Indeed, the videos here are something. On the video for “What Kind of Man,” Welch’s car gets t-boned and flipped over; she’s alone in a room, surrounded by a circle of men. With some of the most violent choreography this side of a Sia video, Welch snarls and shouts, tries to fend off dozens of arms and is quite literally ripped away from someone.
Against this is the album’s most driving song: over a simple, Kinks-ish riff and bursts of horn, Welch shouts and shouts “What kind of man loves like this,” over and over until you wonder if she’s even speaking about love at all. It’s all tension and drama and doesn’t let the listener go.
There are moments of release. The title track, “How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful” is lush, almost baroque pop and ends with swelling strings and a long instrumental coda. Conversely, “Queen of Peace” opens with strings and horns before settling into a driving rock groove. “My love is no good against the fortress that it made of you,” she sings with the band pounding away behind her.
At times, the whole thing seems to have a mid-70s Los Angeles kind of vibe. There’s the cover, where Welch glares at the listener, poses like she’s holding a smoke and sits under some very 70s typography. There’s the many references to pills and infidelity, to drinking and losing yourself. It’s kind of a Rumours-meets-Hotel California kind of feeling, music that’s maybe a little overstuffed and frustrated. It reminds me a lot of HAIM’s debut and, for whatever it’s worth, Welch takes a moment to specifically thank them in the liners.
Which isn’t to say the music here is in debt to Stevie Nicks, Este Haim, or anyone of the sort. Her songs seem personal, yes, but they don’t last out with the fury of songs like “The Chain” or “Go Your Own Way.” Here, Welch saves her harshest observations for herself: “Another drink to pass the time / I can never say no,” she sings on “Delilah,” a song where she sings she’s going to be free and feel fine, but sounds like she’s trying to convince herself more than the listener.
Throughout it all, Welch comes across like an actress playing a dramatic role. She teases and hints at the danger and confusion, sometimes losing herself in the songs, but plays her role with skill. Her singing comes across with force when it needs to, but falls back to a whisper when the scene calls for it. She plays with the listener’s emotion on How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful in a way most albums don’t; she shouts and yells and holds the listener in her hands. The way Welch seems to teeter between getting it all together and falling apart into a mess is compelling in a way not many other albums have been recently.
It loses a little steam in the back half, particularly on the moody and plodding “Long and Lost,” which moves along like a blanket of fog and “Caught,” which moves like a slower version of the album’s first side. It ends on the mechanical sounding “Mother,” which sounds like something out of the 70s: a tinny drum machine, light guitar accents and a crashing chorus.
It’s tempting to compare this to other backwards-looking albums of late, especially those by HAIM and Taylor Swift. While Swift’s record is also self-obsessed – remember, she thought the year of her birth was important enough to devote an album to! – Welch is more introspective. The danger Swift hinted at in songs like “Blank Space,” is more direct here in “Ship to Wreck.” Hell, comparare the videos: while Swift looks and acts kinda crazy, but by her video’s finish, Welch is lying on the floor in a pile of pills.
I’m not really sure what happened to Welch in her year off, but I’m sure I wouldn’t want to go through it myself. Still, I’m struck by how powerful the songwriting and performing is here. How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful is as powerful an album as Florence + The Machine has released and it’s certainly all three. Recommended.
Rating: 4/5