Five of the eleven songs
stood out to me personally. Despite the fact that three of the standout five
tracks occur within the first twenty minutes of the (just over) forty-five
minute album, the spectacular thing about How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful is
that it is bookended by the two best songs on the album, Ship to Wreck and Mother. Not that this album needs any redeeming qualities, but if it did –
this would be it.
First track Ship to
Wreck drops you in the big, blue, beautiful deep end with its rousing rhythm
and pumping bassline. The heart-starting tempo that hasn’t been featured since
2009’s Lungs is accompanied by Florence’s ever-impressive, soaring vocals.
The angelic effortlessness of her voice has been a mainstay throughout the
band’s career, and its failsafe ability to leave listeners in awe has confirmed
the necessity for it in her latest work.
Title track How Big, How
Blue, How Beautiful is the orchestral pinnacle and second longest track on the
album, with a running time of just over five and a half minutes. Despite its
comparative lengthiness, the intricacy of the melodies ensures every bar
provides a new point of interest. It is these melodies that were so clearly constructed
to make this song the centrepiece of the album, and this makes them even easier
to appreciate.
Queen of Peace invokes
comfortingly familiar “down the rabbit-hole” imagery. The exquisite strings and
fanfare-like brass section, coupled with the lyrical references to kings and
queens, conjure technicolour images of Lewis Carroll’s fantasy world. The fantastical
references to mythical kings and queens is a welcome throwback to Rabbit Heart
(Raise It Up) where King Midas’ gold touch is a recurring theme throughout the
lyrics.
Delilah is an aptly
named song that details an encounter with a wonderfully bad influence. The
self-destructive, reckless abandonment and inability to have just one drink has
reappeared from Lungs' Hurricane Drunk. The heavenly choruses of background
singers and clap-along rhythms give the listener an almost religious,
gospel-style experience. This is all before the three minute forty mark, where
there is a distinct change in atmosphere, and it gets about as rock n’ roll as
Florence + The Machine has ever been – until Mother, five tracks later…
Mother is my favourite
song on the album – empowering, passionate and powerful, it goes from easy
listening to headbangingly good (and back a few times) within its five minutes
and fifty seconds. The intro of minimalistic electric guitar melodies and soft
percussion almost lulls the listener into a false sense of security, before the
chorus and its punchy drum fills, crashing cymbals and slamming electric chord
progressions hammer the message home. The successful experimentation with
previously unused technology, such as fuzz and distortion pedals couples with the
constant exhibition of light and dark throughout the song and cements it, in my
mind at least, as the best song on the album.
The reason this album was
so enjoyable to me, as a long time Florence + The Machine fan, is that the
collaborative artists were able to maintain recognisable themes and concepts,
enabling them to appeal to their current fan base, whilst simultaneously
introducing new instrumentation and a fresh ‘feel’ in order to gain new fans.
Even the songs not listed as standouts are integral pieces of the puzzle that
is this album. Florence Welch’s voice, as always, is absolutely faultless and
her merely singing the phonebook would be music to anybody’s ears.
Lucky for us though, she
decided to sing How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful instead.
