As Florence Welch (and her Machine) prepares for Glastonbury greatness, she has also been tantalising her audience with nuggets of her new, third album “How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful”. First we had “What Kind of Man” which has a slow, typically-Florence ethereal build up, but after a minute kicks in with the fiercer ‘rock’ the band normally don’t choose for their singles. The video is as quirky as the music, featuring charged scenes of romance, break up and a bone-crunching car crash.
Next to be released was “St. Jude”, promoted as an album track, but with a video directed by Vincent Haydock, this saw Florence continue what the director describes as her journey through their version of the Divine Comedy (Dante, not Hannon). This track is more of the haunting vocal, slightly spiritual organs and backing that we expect from Florence, but dialled back down from ‘obvious hit single’ mode to ‘quite nice album track’ mode. The video sees Florence wandering as though lost, meeting unusual characters along her journey before being carried prostrate in her lover’s arms.
The more obvious first big single (although the third track released) is “Ship to Wreck” which is a faster, Texas-does-Fleetwood-Mac upbeat track in which Florence questions her own self-destructive nature and has another artistic video featuring relationship woes as multiple Florences freak out and then duke it out with their lover and anyone within grabbing distance. This is such a radio friendly hit in the making that it serves as the perfect final nudge to pre-order the album.
“How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful” is released on Island Records on 1 June 2015.
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