Florence Welch has returned with a new album that is bigger, louder and more dramatic than her multi-million selling debut Lungs. Alan Corr meets pop’s loudest star to talk about giving up booze, ghostly visitations, and partying with Rihanna and Jay-Z
Given the elemental power and emotional overflow of Florence Welch’s music I half expect her to arrive for our interview like a bedraggled Brontë heroine, all flailing hair, flowing cloak, and a wild look in her eyes. Instead she is perched rather prettily on a table in her dressing room in RTÉ beside a bowl of fruit.
The 25-year-old Londoner has become somewhat of a fashion icon since her swift rise from art school obscurity to international stardom and today she is dressed in a red oriental-patterned top, black skinnies, and a plum coloured hat, an ensemble that makes her look like she’s just stepped out of a seventies clothes catalogue. And that’s the thing about Florence Welch: despite her youth there is something not just otherworldly about her but also other era too.
Her speaking voice is also a surprise. You might expect an extravagant husk to match her massive wail but Flo has the small, delicate tones of a privately educated young lady. She’s also very easy going. This is the first time she has been back in Ireland since her appearance at Dublin’s Olympia Theatre a few years ago. “I remember I climbed up on the balcony,” she says, nimbly scooping up an apple and taking a dainty bite. “I’ve had a few stage invasions in return!”
Since then a lot has happened to Florence Welch. Her debut album Lungs was propelled to global success after a cannily chosen cover of Candi Staton’s You Got The Love and these days Flo is photographed by Karl Lagerfeld and invited to parties by Jay-Z. Now comes her second album Ceremonials, a massive blast of Florentine decadence which is very more-ish indeed - more widescreen, more dramatic, more theatrical and, well, more of the same.
Recorded in Abbey Road and her own Wolf Tone studios, Florence goes for broke on songs touching on science and human evolution, death, the English countryside and Joan of Arc. All This and Heaven Too laments the failure of language to articulate her wonder: "All my stumbling phrases never amounted to anything worth this feeling.” What The Water Gave Me likens obsessive love to drowning (“she’s a cruel mistress and a bargain must be made”), and on Shake it Out she tries to blast away a demon hangover.
Your new album Ceremonials is a pretty overwhelming experience to listen to. Was it equally an equally draining experience recording it?
“It was hard work making the album but it was quite a joyous experience as well. I think this time around I had a better idea of what I wanted to do and it was a really enjoyable experience. We did a lot of work with the band this time, a lot of rehearsing live before we went in to record it.”
You describe Lungs as a scrapbook with songs and ideas gathered up over the years. Ceremonials is more full formed
“Hopefully because that’s what I was aiming for. I wanted to make something that had a cohesive sound, something that sounded whole, more of a story.”
A lot has changed for you since you sold three million copies of Lungs. For example, Jay-Z invited you over to a party in Las Vegas last year. How did that go?
“That was pretty surreal actually! I definitely fell off a table at one point in the night while watching Kanye and Jay-Z, Beyoncé and Rihanna singing over their own songs in the DJ booth. I got very excited and I sat on a table and fell over. No matter what situation I’m in I will always be incorrigibly myself. I can’t remember what happened after I fell off the table!”
There was a suggestion that you work with some big name American producers on Ceremonials but did you ever really consider anyone else other than Lungs producer and the man you describe as you shaman Paul Epworth again?
“He was definitely going to be the one. I think it was just the way Cosmic Love turned out from Lungs. It was favourite song from that album and he produced that one so it just made sense.”
Breaking Down is one of the only songs on Ceremonials that isn’t actually an overload. Did you think it was time to turn things down a notch?
“I think so. I think there’s always a time and place for calm even though it’s one of the album’s darkest songs but I wanted to turn it on its head and give it this sweet melody at odds with the lyrics. It’s about old ghosts and regrets, I always feel slightly haunted by things hanging around. I’m a light sleeper too! I never know if I’m awake of asleep but I don’t have a condition or anything like that.”
The opening song on the album Only If For a Night is actually about an actual visitation from your late grandmother who died when you were 13
“It’s a dream I had about my grandmother. It’s funny because when you dream about lost loved ones you think you’re going to get some grand message from heaven but she gave me quite practical career advice in my dream. She was really into performance herself. She did a lot of theatre. It was very special to see her because it really was like she was there.”
Between you, Adele, Rihanna, Lady Gaga, beyoncé and many others there is a definite female rule going on in the charts at the moment. Any explanation?
“I’m not sure but I think that maybe has been such a masculine environment musically for so long that it‘s just coming in cycles. Sexism isn’t something I have encountered but you do have to prove yourself and you do have to fight to have creative control that little bit harder perhaps than a man.”
Do The Machine like to stay in the background?
“Yeah but I love doing interviews with Izzy (long time collaborator and friend Isabella Machine Summers) because she’s fun. I’ve known her forever and she’s my best friend so interacting is something we do very well! She used to babysit my little sister, Grace. Me and Izzy kinda lost with each other after we were kids but then we kept running into each other at clubs a few years back. She’d be DJing in the jungle room and I’d be whirling around somewhere, both of us dressed up in these really weird outfits. We kind of got to know each other again through art college and going to gigs in the garage punk scene and she had this little studio where she made hip hop music.”
People seem to like to project ideas and preconceptions onto you like that you’re some yet you say there’s nothing you like more than sitting in your mum’s house having a cup of tea
“Yeah I think people may think a lot of different things about me but I am a bit of home body. My room is pretty extremely decorated! It’s just full of colours and stuff and loads of old paintings. It looks like this old Victorian junkshop. I do have loads of paintings but I’ve nowhere to hang them so they’re all stacked up in my house in London. I love London and I think that can be heard in my music. London is kind of gothic and it’s old and it’s spooky and it’s a bit haunted I think and it’s ancient and bloody and violent. I think growing up in London definitely affected me.”
You supported U2 on several of the dates of their 360° Tour last year . . .
“It was like performing in a Coliseum. It was like gladiatorial combat because it was in the round and you were exposed to the elements and the open air and it was maybe the onlyu. Bono told me how to dance in high heels and he also told me about U2’s Glastonbury performance and how everything that could have possibly gone wrong went wrong including him ripping his trousers on stage. I think he was lunging and his trousers ripped! He was telling me how he had to find a new way of performing that didn’t involve moving.”
Shake it Out is a song you wrote to exorcise the worst hangover you’ve ever had. You knocked booze on the head recently. Was it hard to do?
“Yes and it is hard when the whole band are together after a show and I have to go home and get some rest but it’s kind of worth it for preserving yourself on tour. There is so much work to do when you’re on the road that you can’t really keep yourself at that level if you’re partying all the time. I did get a chance to have a bit of a blow out yesterday though! Hahaha.”
What are you expectations of Ceremonials considering that Lungs sold three million copies?
“Ha! I’m just looking forward to playing it live and getting out there touring and getting it to the fans. I really hope people like it.”
Ceremonials is out now. Florence and The Machine play The O2, Dublin on March 2 2012
