I’m not a fan of Florence or her Machine and I doubt I ever will be. I desperately wanted to like her and I tried to like her album, I really did. The critics loved it, my friends loved it but- apart from a couple of the songs that were released as singles- I was left with a distinct sense of ‘meh’ by the whole thing. Anyway, you can probably imagine my sense of impending irritation when my friends announced at this year’s Reading Festival that we ‘simply must see Florence’.
The whole thing started painlessly enough with our Flossie emerging onto the stage in a floaty black number that was rather less free spirited flower child than child-at-Halloween-party-dressed-as-bat whilst delivering a pretty decent rendition of Between Two Lungs. The next few songs My Boy Builds Coffins, Kiss With a Fist and Howl didn’t make a huge impression me although at this point I was beginning to enjoy myself, but not because of the quality of the music. You see, Florence, despite the fact that her ethereal oddball shtick is as convincing as Terry Wogan’s toupee, has real stage presence and really knows how to get an audience going. Even I began to become so swept up in the atmosphere of the occasion that at times I almost forgot that her singing wasn’t really in tune and that most of the songs sounded the same. The rest of the gig carried on this vein and for the most part I was moderately entertained.
Having said that, there were a couple of low points: the gig’s penultimate song, the overwrought and redundant cover of The Source’s You’ve Got The Love being the worst offender. Amazingly, this monstrosity managed to get the best reaction from the crowd who sang along with gusto. Personally, I felt like Malcolm MacDowell in A Clockwork Orange, my ears clamped open by the volume of the discordant noises that emanated from the stage.
Fortunately the final songs Rabbit Heart and Dog Days Are Over, like the arrival of a new bunny after the grisly death of a beloved family pet, helped to erase any unpleasant memories of the event and ended it with a triumphant flourish. All in all, Florence and the Machine left me feeling like a Jewish man at a Nuremburg Rally; I didn’t particularly like the content but I had to admire the showmanship.
Charles Rivington