Ceremonials - Florence and The Machine

When people imagine angels, they tend to think of big, tall and serene looking people with wings.

Often there is a white glow of light behind them like what you’d see if you walked in on someone in the kitchen with the fridge door open. We tend to imagine them coming with this calming presence and everything being okay. Why then do they always pop up saying, “Do not be afraid” whenever they show up? Who’s going to be afraid of a person in a toga with some wings? I’ll tell you why they say that. Angels are terrifying and this is on God, literally. In the Book of Ezekiel, the prophet’s vision depicts them as having four faces: that of a lion, an ox, an eagle, and a human. They have straight legs, four wings, and bull hooves for feet that gleam like polished brass. One set of wings covers their body, and the other is used for flight.

You're telling me you’re seeing this and not feeling anything but extreme fear and the desire to run or shoot this thing? Fuck right off! If I saw an angel, I won’t lie to you, after pissing my pants I’d definitely get my fists out and start swinging. I know these are God's mandem and they exist to do good things but I’m calling the army and we’re going to war. Some descriptions describe them as beings made out of interlocking gold wheels with each wheel’s exterior covered with multiple eyes. They move by floating themselves in the sky. What the fuck is this? They are extremely shocking to say the least. Whoever is running PR for angels deserves a raise they tricked us all.

This perfectly describes Florence Welch. She is without a doubt, an angel. I’m not even gassing her up or anything, there is no better word to describe her. She is what the PR machine had in mind when they sanitized the image of angels. They knew they had this extremely powerful being on their hands but we, the simple people, we not ready and so they gave us this beautiful, ethereal package but inside it lived a power so insanely terrifying in its strength, we would completely perish if we stared at it with our bare eyeballs. Inside her is a voice God spent 10 000 hours putting together. They say on the 7th day God rested but what they don’t tell you is that he was round back, in his shed, painstakingly putting together the very chords that make up her voice. The pitch, the cadence, the tones, all of these things he antagonised over until finally he got everything right. Once that was done, he unleashed her onto the world and she gave us Ceremonials as the perfect showcase of just what she can do.

Ceremonials is the second studio album by English indie rock band Florence and the Machine. It was released on 28 October 2011. The standard edition of the album was entirely produced by Paul Epworth,  a man who has produced some of the best albums of our time and someone I respect highly, who also worked prominently on the band's debut album Lungs.

The album opens in the best possible way a gift from heaven should, with a big showcase of strong vocal work and string instruments in two. Only If For The Night is the album’s opening track and sets the sound and level of the album off really well with Welch welcoming you in to this journey with her warm but powerful voice accompanied by harps and violins.

Before you’ve had time to settle into your viewing chair, Shake It Out comes in with its baroque pop and gospel elements. You know they got together upstairs and worked hard on this one in the heavenly realms because it does an excellent job of being both catchy and uplifting.

Third song in the album is What The Water Gave me. This is one of the most beautiful songs I’ve ever heard.  The main theme of the song is Virginia Woolf's death; her walking into the water with her pockets filled with stones is the theme of the song.

“Lay me down
Let the only sound
Be the overflow
Pockets full of stones”

From the way this song opens with its tinny sounding guitar riff and melodic bass line setting a bedrock for Welch to sing over and then everything stopping to let her sing the chorus over organ chords and then slowly building up into the second verse. ART! This song is one giant build up that always gets my mind perfectly imagining what the it must be like to walk into the ocean with a pocketful of stones and watching the waves crashing over you and welcoming you into their depths. The quiet moments in it are almost reflective. She weighs up thoughts of love and suicide in such a way that I can’t help but feeling so deeply involved, like it’s me in that water.

I need to make a special mention to Seven Devils. In terms of the overall makeup of the song, it sounds a lot more basic compared to the other songs in the album. It’s a voice, a serious voice, hard and loud drum sounds, deep piano chords and backing vocals that give it haunting feel. That’s what this song will do, it will haunt you. It has a quality to it that makes it stick to the inside of your soul like a blackjack. It’s spiky and almost violent in the way it makes you take notice of it.

The album is full of really strong songs that would be world beaters on their own but when you collect them all and put them into one project, you end up with something I strongly imagine is played in the corridors of Heaven itself.

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