TRACK-BY-TRACK: Florence & The Machine's 'High As Hope' LP Is Their Most Emotionally Painful Yet

During an interview with The Telegraph last year, Florence Welch revealed that her forthcoming album would explore the "black hole" into which she fell after splitting with her boyfriend James Nesbitt. Welch has also confessed she is prone to substance abuse. Rivers of her tears flow through High As Hope, Florence + The Machine's fourth studio album, and the listener gets a sense that there's still a lot of healing to be done before Welch feels whole again.

1. june

So High As Hope is released in June with an opener named after the month. Isolated beats. Opening line: "The show is ending and I have started to cry..." Welch's expressive and vulnerable vocals are unparalleled. Even better than Adele's? 

Is that the sound of marching feet? The string arrangement swirls, there's an electronic effect that evokes searching for a two-way radio frequency then enter beseeching chorus: "Hold onto each other." Everything is thrown at this song now, instrumentally: drums, hand clapping - it becomes a whirling dervish of musical instruments. Cut to silence. 

2. hunger

The second single to be lifted from High As Hope, you will already have heard this one. The "hoo"s that open this track call to mind the fabulous Annie Lennox. "At 17 I started to starve myself..." - again with the striking opening lines. This one features piano stabs among the strings, plus tambourine flourishes. Welch's voice is incandescent, front and centre as deserved. A foot-stomping rallying cry: "We all have a hunger!" 

Welch then seems to go confessional: "I thought that love was in the drugs/But the more I took, the more it took away."

We can imagine Welch covering a lot of stage space with her trademark 'free' dancing during live performances of Hunger as she does throughout the song's superb, AG Rojas-directed music video. Then after "...and for a moment I forget to worry..." it unexpectedly peters out. Bloody gorgeous stuff.

3. south london forever

The contrast between Welch's exquisite, almost-operatic timbre and lyrics - which often detail getting on it and caterwauling around - is what so endears us to this artist: her authenticity. 

"Young and drunk and stumbling in the street outside the Builder's Arms/Like foals unsteady on their feet/With the Arts students and the boys in bands/High on E and holding hands with someone that I just met."

Galloping drums underscore lush strings and a piano-created pulse that calls to mind LCD Soundsystem's All My Friends but played at a much slower pace. Bombastic brass and bass drums rise up before we're held captive by Welch's exquisite pipes, a cappella with BV embellishment: "But everything I ever did was just another way to scream your name."

4. big god

Recently released as High As Hope's third single, Jamie xx cowrote this number. A dramatic, bass piano-chord intro heralds doom. This song opens with its chorus. Unrequited love lyrics ("I still like you the most/You'll always be my favourite ghost") seem to point towards a relationship with something other than a mere mortal. Laidback cymbal, trumpet proclamations then Big God becomes a lush, cinematic score. Percussion is so varied that Welch will probably have to recruit a percussionist of similar calibre to Iron & Wine's Elizabeth Goodfellow to translate live arrangements. "Don't leave me on this white cliff/Let it slide down to the sea." Weird throat gargling noise that reminds us of the Curb Your Enthusiasm episode when Larry David goes down in his wife on one rare occasion only to wind up with a rogue pube wrapped 'round his epiglottis. Yeah, nah to that bit. 

Jazzy instrumentation. There's flute and sax. Is someone drowning? This one's certainly a statement piece.

5. sky full of song

This song, the album's lead single, was released in April, 2018. It opens starkly, with vocals so pure and the distant tinkling of wind chimes. Again there's a reference to someone who's been larging it too much.

"A good friend told me/You've been staying out so late/Be careful my darling/Be careful of what it takes/What I've seen so far/The good ones always seems to break."

The lyrics pop over strummed bass and distant, echoing BVs. There's sleigh bells just for a spell. "I thought I was flying/But maybe I'm dying tonight." Enter strings, right on cue. The arrangement falls away gradually until we're left with vocals and a couple of foot stomps. 

6. grace

Pretty piano tinkling. "I'm sorry I ruined your birthday..." Sampha scores a writing credit on this one. 

"I don't think it would be too long until I was drunk in Camberwell again" - yep, seems like Welch hit the turps big time following her breakup. 

Gentle drumming, probably with mallets. Sometimes the ebbs and flows are predictable in the arrangements of the songs on this album. 

7. patricia

9. the end of love

Discordant strings that sound like a swarm of mozzies until they scale back to become extended notes. Enter sporadic piano chords. Welch approaches lofty Kate Bush heights on this one; it's almost as heartbreaking as This Woman's Work. Our hearts hurt for Welch. There are recurring water references (such as "wash away" here) throughout the lyrics in this set of songs. Mass Under Pressure-style finger snaps. Will this album be toured with a choir that is also responsible for body percussion? We sure hope so. 

10. NO CHOIR