Dance yourself to death? Beyond the huge machinery of mainstream hype and her voluminously voiced self-reflection, Florence Welch’s fifth album about purging her demons does also contain some strong tunes. The album’s concept is based on her discovery of choreomania, a historic group ritual of dancing to exhaustion, including one such case of 400 women danced themselves to death in the Middle Ages. For an artist of such dramatic self-expression and a tendency to go to extremes (including a decision to go tee-total and purge many former collaborators for her fourth album High As Hope), it’s easy to see how this would have a see-saw appeal. The music itself does not itself reflect non-stop movement, more dramatic folk-pop, constantly declamatory about dominance (King) mental health and mood swings (Free), the breathy Daffodil or the synth disco pop of My Love. If you like the older Florence material, and can get past the self-indulgence, this is a return to form of sorts, helped in a big way by super-producer Jack Antonoff and Glass Animal’s Dave Bayley. Out on Polydor.
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