Florence + The Machine | "Ceremonials" | Album Review

Story by Mitch McCann 

| Published Nov 8, 2011

I’ve already listened to the new Florence + the Machine album more than is healthy for any one man. People gnawing at the bit to hear Florence’s new release were primed to fire, touting the release’s brilliance before it hit the shelves. With a polarizing sound that seemingly only attracts the positive, Florence Welch erupts forth on “Ceremonials,” slicing open the very guts of her sonic landscape and spilling out track after track of monumental darkness.

Undoubtedly, everything about “Ceremonials” is taken up a notch, but not to a degree that is stable enough to be maintained over the course of the album, which plays out across an edge-skirting, fierce hour of open choruses and jangley instrumentation. “Ceremonials” reads as an unrelenting operatic performance, and for those needing an escape into a world saturated with Welch’s endless ambition - you’ve found your home.

There are two directions the follow-up to “Lungs” could have taken. Let’s call them Romancing the Sorcerer’s Stone, largely focusing on her powerful voice and darkly romantic touch while evoking tracks “Cosmic Love,” “Dog Days Are Over,” and “Blinding” - or the more earthy Back-Alley Songstress with a Knife approach, causing her to lean towards keeping tracks low and cheekily sinister, recalling “Kiss with a Fist,” “Girl With One Eye” , “My Boy Builds Coffins”.

Welch clearly veered towards the former in “Ceremonials.” While this course gives the whole album a fine taste of epic-ness that captivated Grammy audiences and Radio DJ’s, it causes Welch to leave behind much of what gave “Lungs” its bite.

For anyone else, “Ceremonials” would be an unadulterated triumph of sound. The only negative things you can draw from the album would ring positive had they been anyone else. Too ambitious, too ‘out there,’ too grand. Few could do what Welch has done. Clinging to the old adage of “shooting for the moon and landing among the stars,” “Ceremonials” leaves “Lungs” behind, pulls hard on the throttle and aims higher than any other release of the year.