FLORENCE + THE MACHINE

Dance Fever (Polydor)

Album five Dance Fever for the festival favourites sees Florence Welch (and The Machine) diving deep into self-deprecating humour for her lyrical inspiration. There are too many good lines to quote: Welch wonders if you can be a good mother and a selfish artist on King and the excellent Cassandra while Dream Girl Evil and Girls Against God offer both perspectives (deities and heaven are a recurring theme).

Dance Fever’s Choreomania asks you to replace the usual live-laugh-love maxims with dance “…with the complete conviction of someone who’s never actually had anything bad happen to them.” For a band known for a production sound that sits on the comfortable side of quirky, and a performance style that’s so spontaneous you wonder if it must be planned, Florence + The Machine have done well to lambast themselves without losing any of their apparently genuine uniqueness on Dance Fever.

words JOHN-PAUL DAVIES