Review:
“Precocious Brit Florence Welch fired a bullet into the head of the U.K. music scene in 2008 with the single Kiss with a Fist,” JCM a song later “used in an episode of BAFTA-winning teen drama Skins and the American comedy horror film Jennifer’s Body.” WK It was “a punk-infused, perfectly juvenile summer anthem that had critics wiping the names Lily Allen, Amy Winehouse, and Kate Nash from their vocabularies and replacing them with Florence and the Machine.” JCM
“While the comparisons were apt at the time, ‘Kiss with a Fist’ turned out to be a red herring in the wake of the release of Lungs, one of the most musically mature and emotionally mesmerizing albums of 2009. With an arsenal of weaponry that included the daring musicality of Kate Bush, the fearless delivery of Sinéad O’Connor, and the dark, unhinged vulnerability of Fiona Apple, the London native crafted a debut that not only lived up to the machine-gun spray of buzz that heralded her arrival, but easily surpassed it.” JCM
It “is an intoxicating mix of delicate fragility, dark humor and twisted Tim Burton style fairy-tales.” AM “Like Kate Bush, Welch has little interest (for the most part) in traditional pop structures, and her songs are at their best when they see something sparkle in the woods and veer off of the main trail in pursuit.” JCM “From the live favourite You’ve Got the Love [a cover of a Candi Staton song] to the raw blues-tinged Girl with One Eye to the beautifully painful Between Two Lungs, the album is crammed with crowd pleasers.” AM
“‘Kiss with a Fist,’ as good as it is, pales in comparison to stand-out cuts like Dog Days Are Over…and Cosmic Love.” JCM There are also “fresh tracks like…Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up) , Drumming Song – with its epic denseness, the terrifyingly brilliant Howl and Hurricane Drunk.” AM
Everything is “anchored to the earth by Welch’s knockout voice (which hopefully in time will lose the occasional Natalie Merchant affectation), and a truly impressive and intuitive trio of producers and a backing band that sounds as intimate with the material as its creator.” JCM
Thematically, some songs deal with her recent breakup with a boyfriend, while others “are about violence and death. When questioned about this by the NME, lead singer Florence Welch responded: "Well, what other subject is there? I remember realising that my parents were going to die and weeping. Weeping as if my father had actually died.’” WK
“With it’s paradoxical charms of heartbreak, love and loss, Lungs promises to leave us wanting more of the insanely captivating Florence Welch.” AM
Review Source(s):
0.1
0.61
1.4
