Florence rocks harder than most females nowadays. She loves a good crunching guitar and on this album she shows her mad love for soul music. Mix in her good girl gone bad voice, plenty of reverb and tons of synths and you have a classic album in the making. This is classic rock at its best and baddest. Florence Welch is the woman to take this all on her slight shoulders and make it her own. She hinted at all this with her first album and all its throwback glory now it has become fully realized. It is fully reverential to the past and also totally modern at the same time. The producer brought on to help bring it all to fruition is Markus Dravs, who has worked with Bjork and Arcade Fire. So that makes sense. He is a master at allowing some pop leak into rock acts and still allow them to claim street cred. So you get Motown instead of goth and you’ll be loving every moment of “Queen of Peace”. Then tracks like “What Kind of Man” showcase Florence’s powerful voice and ability to make us love and not cringe at the drama she is bringing. Florence worships at the altar of Kate Bush and Grace Slick. It is not often that someone can so heavily reference the past and yet sound so modern.
Florence and the Machine – How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful
