After the intimist well-led track High As Hope released in 2018, opening herself once more in a new opus hasn’t been an easy task. It took over four years for the singer to find inspiration again, as well as to get back on her feet from years of excessive alcohol use and from a painful breakup, as she confessed recently in an interview. A couple of months prior to the first lockdown in 2020, Florence Welch developed a passion for choreomania. The term coins a social phenomenon of collective hysteria, which involves a group of people dancing erratically and strangely until they collapse from exhaustion. The mania swept through Europe between the 14th and 17th centuries. Her new album has been recorded during quarantine in London and stresses what Florence missed the most during that time – clubs, dancing, festivals, friendliness, and the hope of a warm reunion with her audience. This time, the singer of the 2008 hit Dog Days Are Over wants to keep her head above water and get some fresh away from the rather gloomy context everyone has gone through for the past few years.
Her comeback was long-awaited. Almost fifteen years after she made her musical debut, filled stadiums, and reached the top of the charts, Florence Welch designed her fifth record as a “‘be careful what you wish for’ fable”, as she commented in the New York Times. According to her, each one of the songs she wrote became a liberating rope around her neck that dragged her up to the sky. The burning Dance Fever comes out as both a vulnerable and danceable album. An ode to the power of dance and to freedom of movement, which feels good in the current pandemic situation that has hindered our body for the past two years.
Dance Fever (2022) by Florence + The Machine, available on every music streaming platform. Live in Paris at AccorHotels Arena on November 14th, 2022.
