IS IT TOO LATE… TO COME ON HOME?

long and lost and searching for love...

And the air was full
Of various storms and saints
Praying in the street
As the banks began to break
And I'm in the throes of it
Somewhere in the belly of the beast
But you took your toll on me
So I gave myself over willingly
Oh, you got a hold on me
I don't know how I don't just stand outside and scream
I am teaching myself how to be free

The monument of a memory
You tear it down in your head
Don't make the mountain your enemy
Get out, get up there instead
You saw the stars out in front of you
Too tempting not to touch
But even though it shocked you
Something's electric in your blood
And people just untie themselves
Uncurling lifelines

If you could just forgive yourself

But still you stumble, feet give way
Outside the world seems a violent place
But you had to have him, and so you did
Some things you let go in order to live
While all around you the buildings sway
You sing it out loud, who made us this way
I know you're bleeding, but you'll be okay
Hold on to your heart, you'll keep it safe
Hold on to your heart, don't give it away

You'll find a rooftop to sing from
Or find a hallway to dance
You don't need no edge to cling from
Your heart is there, it's in your hands
I know it seems like forever
I know it seems like an age
But one day this will be over
I swear it's not so far away

 ~ Various Storms & Saints | Florence & The Machine

Album: How Big How Blue How Beautiful (2015) ~

Sometimes the music we love sings us lullabies, or dances with us, it’s beat and rhythm finding their way inside our very bones. Sometimes music makes our heart sing, or it is a friendly, warm and pure place we visit when the world seems too heavy. It can make us laugh or smile, or think, as the artist goes to places wild and hysterical and free. It can seduce us, letting us feel lust and desire with everything we are. Music heals us, aiding in the cultivation of emotional intelligence unlike anything else. Various Storms And Saints is a song Florence’ composed to herself, for loving someone she wasn’t meant to. It is featured on her third album How Big How Blue How Beautiful (2015) which is her best work to date. And that is to say nothing of the short films that accompany it. 

"Maybe I've always been more comfortable in chaos..."

Florence Welch has been compared to the likes of Kate Bush, Tori Amos and Stevie Nicks - but a fair listen of her catalogue to date confirms this assessment is overly simple, and not entirely fair. She very much holds her own unique space amidst the great female popular artists to emerge in the last 20 years. Something had shifted in her songwriting by her third album, as she took the wild and exciting layered melodies with rolling drums she was known for, distilling it into something new and flourishing, accompanied by brass, piano and chamber orchestral scores. The album cover conveys this intent - she looks us in the eye and we immediately recognise this iteration of Florence is different from the artist that first emerged with Dog Days Are Over in 2006 (she still hadn't found her voice then, falsely marketed as “indie” by her label even when she insisted she was “alternative pop music”, and she was pulled in a dozen creative directions). Her sophomore offering Ceremonials was closer to the sound that has uniquely defined her, stunning but missing an element of vulnerability and imperfection. In the nine years since her debut album, she went through the sort of relationship that would drive even the strongest among us to the edges of madness... it altered everything she was. While losing herself in addiction, she faced a dark night of the soul. But with the help of her little sister, she rallied and channelled her trauma into a stunning and achingly soulful third album that remains firmly placed within my top twenty records of all time.  

I turn to it when I need to ease my anxieties and feel comfort and understanding, it soothes the soul. This of course isn’t unusual for me. Usually when I write, it is a song, film or novel that has connected me to parts of myself I am still trying to make sense of, giving me a way to go so far in…. This time however, the thoughts and feelings came to me scattered, over weeks. Months. In dreams. Perhaps they were slumbering for years, and the events of the last two years awoke them. All the while, on my late night drives, one song of hers raised its voice above the others. The album opens up with its weakest track, and doesn’t kick in until its second song, What Kind of Man. Her rage is felt and laced throughout every damn word in her strong vocal delivery… I certainly have had my fair share of listening to it while processing my own anger, over a man I still loved who had gone silent on me for months with no explanation. The songs from there cascade into the symphonic title track - I often joke that the orchestral arrangement that carries out the track is what happiness sounds like, the expertly structured Mother that sounds straight off some forgotten Fleetwood Mac recording led by Stevie. Other highlights are the soaring St Jude with its perfect lyrics, and the pulsating Third Eye, or the gorgeous and fun Delilah, meant for dancing barefoot even in spirit (I also strongly recommend the thundering B-side Which Witch, which should have opened the record). 

But it’s Long & Lost however which is Florence’s most beautiful composition... ever.

(Long and Lost - audio)

The music video for Long & Lost sees it introduced with Queen of Peace, a track pulsating with strings, brass, and harmonies found within cascading melodies. It’s a song about finding peace within yourself in light of the damage you have caused while living as a wounded, broken creature lost in the dark. In the short film below, Florence simply demonstrates this by illustrating chaos among families in a village, as they rip each other apart and her calm presence is invisible, unnoticed. At the centre of the conflict, there is also a man who is revealed to be her lover. Alongside the narrative and woven into the story with tenderness and subtlety, are a young girl and boy, her long red hair the only indication she a memory of Florence herself. Through this, it becomes a song about love lost, about trying to go back home in the hopes you might find yourself there again, undamaged and unbroken. 

The lyrics are exquisite, some of Florence’s best writing (as are all the songs on How Beautiful, especially Various Storms and Saints). It also features her most skilled vocal work to date, her soft lilting voice unadorned, souring perfectly from one note to the next. The film is broken up by silence amidst crashing waves, Florence and her lover naked in bed, and a poem written by Florence, read aloud by the nameless male. These people serve as a means to help us understand the feeling of trying to find peace within our past, reconciling who we (truly) are with who we long to be. Often the broken wind up in relationships with secrets, unable to share their true self.  And therein lies the emotional resonance of her music, because the best people I know are working through their pain so that they might know peace. Once we do get to the other side, the masks can come off at last, as we finally embrace all we are by becoming the person we are truly meant to be. No more hiding… no more fear. Only love.

And for that… well it’s never too late.