5/5
Review:
A terrific album
Although I've been aware of Florence & The Machine in a vague sort of way for some time, I hadn't really listened to much in a serious way. Their performance of Ship To Wreck on Jools Holland's programme (broken foot and all) convinced me that I should try this album, and I'm very glad I did. After several listens, I'm a fan.
This is a fine collection of varied, finely crafted, melodious songs with intelligent lyrics, and Florence Welch is a very, very good singer who has the experience now to put those songs across with real meaning. The band are excellent - tight and gutsy but sensitive to the meaning of every song - and the production is fabulous, I think. It is often huge, to the point of being gloriously overblown sometimes, and I absolutely love the result You have to have real skill and class to create the sort of wall of sound which sometimes develops here without it degenerating into a rather generic mush, and this album has skill and class all over it, in my view.
I'm just an old git now, but after decades of devotion to music it's still great to see that real class and talent keeps coming through, and it's always a real pleasure to discover it. I'm late on the scene with Florence, but I'm an enthusiastic convert. For what it's worth, this newbie thinks How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful (an apt title for the content) is a terrific album and I can recommend it very warmly.
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