STACK J#165 Jul 2018

MUSIC

FEATURE

WHO IS THE MACHINE? The ‘Machine’ of the bandname refers to Isabella Summers, Florence Welch’s long-time friend and collaborator. Isabella met Florence when she was nine years old, and was hired by Florence’s parents to babysit the younger Welch daughter. Now a singer, songwriter, musician, remixer and producer, you can see Isabella behind the keyboards when Florence + the Machine play live, but she’s also racked up many songwriting co-credits over the band’s career. Although Welch is the only artist for whom she plays keys, Summers has worked behind the mixing desk with some enormous names including Beyoncé, Nas, Cara Delevigne, Iggy Azalea, Rita Ora and Juliette Lewis.

work very fast and I don’t have the patience to wait for things to be recorded properly.” She says the style of recording took her back to Between Two Lungs and Dog Days Are Over – two of the first songs she ever wrote, which appear on debut Lungs : “I never thought about structure, or whether anything needed to have a middle eight, or a chorus – I just did

out single Hunger illustrates the overarching theme. “ Hunger was actually a poem I was just writing to myself,” Welch explains of the song’s genesis. “I guess I was thinking of something that was bigger than romantic love: ‘Where is this lack of self-love? Where does that come from?’” The idea was to encourage some sort of discussion; when we express our loneliness and verbalise the ways we have tried to manage it,

what felt right. [The process for High As Hope ] was going back to that kind of thing.” Returning to her roots, and finding the beauty in the everyday, is Welch’s intense new pleasure. “Coming back [from the alcohol and parties] and realising what actually makes me happy is… reading, and riding my bike, and seeing my family and friends, and making work, and being creative… the ways that I’ve always loved expressing myself have just got stronger as the

Welch explains, other people around us will recognise that bell, and chime in. “You start to talk to people in a real way,” she says. “’I’ve felt this way. Have you felt this way as well?’” The musician does acknowledge that this is a massive question with myriad avenues of possible

I never thought about structure... I just did what felt right

exploration. But like her words on addressing a question with physical actions (dating, drinking) rather than just mental rumination, she thinks the question of where self-love comes from can be addressed with physicality, too, albeit a much healthier mode: “I quite like the idea of putting a big, spiritual, unanswerable question in a pop song, because you might not be able to answer it, but you can dance about it,” she says. There are plenty of danceable moments on High As Hope , and their immediacy comes from the way Welch wrote this album: demoing on her own, at a little studio around the corner from her house in south London, which she rode to on her bicycle. “I don’t like to hang around – I arrive and I’ll do a burst of four hours of playing whatever’s in the room, constantly,” she says. “I like to just utilise whatever’s around me, like, banging things with sticks! I have to

rest of the stuff that I kind of went into this business for has fallen away,” she says, “which is a really nice place to be in.”

TOURING 12/1/18 - 26/1/18

THE PREVIOUS LPS Lungs (2009) #2 debut (#1 peak) on UK chart, peaking at #2 and #3 on the U.S. and ARIA charts respectively

High as Hope by Florence + the Machine is out now via Universal.

Ceremonials (2011) #1 debut on UK and ARIA charts, peaked at #6 in the U.S. Two Grammy nominations How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful (2015) #1 debut on UK Albums chart, peak #1 position on ARIA and U.S. charts

A DITTY FOR PATTI Mid-tracklist cut Patricia was written about musician Patti Smith, Welch reveals. “I was quite shy about writing it, ‘cause she’s such a hero of mine, and she seems to be an artist who lives for her work, but also has such a reverence and an understanding that… it is life. She seems very in tune with how to live a good life. She seems to retain this idea that it is the kind of tangible everydayness that is miraculous."

Five Grammy nominations Mercury Prize nomination

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