Florence + The Machine High As Hope tour: A fan essay

Florence Welch by Lillie Eiger

Upon leaving my day job at the end of July, one of my goals was to go to all of the Florence + The Machine High As Hope UK dates, and to write something about following the band around on tour, ideally meeting other fans as I travelled from gig to gig.

That didn't happen, for a number of reasons, and maybe it was just as well given that I went on to be very poorly in-between the two gigs I did go to. At least I had a great time though.

The band began their tour in Leeds on Thursday 15 November, and my first encounter with them came the day after on the Friday night in Birmingham. I'd been comparatively late getting my ticket for this gig, thanks to having already purchased two tickets for the Manchester Arena gig. For financial reasons, I then needed to wait a couple of weeks for my friend Bethany to refund me for her ticket so that I would have the money to buy myself a ticket for one of the other shows.

I had been aiming for Glasgow, purely on the basis that I've never been to Glasgow and always wanted to go, but it was sold out, as were most of the other shows by then. The only ones that weren't were Leeds, both nights in London, and the gig in Birmingham. In each case, there were hardly any tickets left and the remaining tickets were all for seats right at the top of the upper tier.

I considered Leeds, it being geographically the nearest of the three locations and, at a push, it might not have required a hotel booking because a late night train journey would have been doable. But the seat that was left didn't look worth it. It was a similar situation with the O2 in London, plus the hotel bill would have been huge in that case. The remaining seat in Birmingham looked marginally closer to the stage in the seating plan, and I felt that the hotel bill was likely to be cheaper as well so I went with that.

One of the problems with depression (and to a certain extent with anxiety as well) is that there are tasks, often relatively straightforward tasks, that you keep putting off and putting off because you just can't face doing them. There was a Twitter thread in the summer that someone put together on this theme, and the writer dubbed it The Impossible Task: You know you have to do it, it's not that hard, but for some reason, you just can't bring yourself to do it. Booking a hotel in Birmingham was my Impossible Task. While booking the gig ticket was relatively straightforward for me, working out my hotel and booking it took me a month. Which meant that most of the hotels near the Genting Arena had already been booked up by then, what with the gig selling out and everything.

I think my dread of travelling to Birmingham might have had something to do with it, in that Birmingham is one of those cities that tends to defeat me geographically. I find it very easy to, if not actually get lost, lose locations in. I've only been to the city once but I vividly remember spending an entire Saturday morning wandering around the city centre, trying to find their big new library. I kept going round and round the Bullring, getting further and further away from where I was meant to be going. Given that the Genting Arena is located in the complex around Birmingham International Airport, rather than in the city itself, I was hoping that the whole experience would be less of a geographical headfuck.

Needless to say, I was wrong: It was probably worse. I won't go into all the details but I will say that it took me a good hour to find my hotel, which is quite something given it's located about ten minutes from the train station. In my defence though, the route you have to take to it is not exactly obvious.

A lot of Florence fans were staying at my hotel, and the staff were evidently used to this, and to the corresponding rush on food ahead of the gig. I left for the Arena at about 7pm, hoping like hell that I could A) Remember the way to the Arena and B) Remember the way back to the hotel after the show.

The Genting Arena is rather like Manchester Arena inside, albeit with a different floorpan. There were food stalls everywhere, and the merch stand was all over flowers and looked lovely. After much deliberation I purchased the tour t-shirt because I really love that Pre-Raphaelite esque Tom Beard shot of Florence Welch in her pink dress.

Florence + The Machine, High As Hope. Cover by Tom Beard.

My seat was four rows down from the very top to the right of the stage, and getting up to my seat was such a faff that I found myself thinking 'I'd better stay here to the end of the show, no bloody way will I ever be able to locate this seat again'.

Florence + The Machine came on around 8:45pm, to much roaring and applause, particularly when Florence emerged wearing an ankle length pink chiffon dress, her hair down. They started with the epic and atmospheric 'June', then went straight into 'Hunger' and 'Between Two Lungs'. I think Florence was feeling nervous as she didn't speak until after the third song, when she said hello and asked everyone to stand up (hurrah!), just before going into 'Only If For A Night' and 'Queen of Peace'.

She talked to us for longer just before 'South London Forever' when she started to explain, and apologise, for talking quietly, but that she was shy "You wouldn't know it to watch me, but I am". She was explaining that she was trying to get better at the talking thing when someone yelled something and she broke off, laughing. Apparently he'd yelled "SEXY BITCH!" which she found funny rather than offensive, and she dealt with lightly and with good humour.

She then talked about 'South London Forever' and it's theme of teenage debauchery: "In the US when I say 'teenage' they think '18', but over here we know we mean '13'" as well as it being a home town salute to Camberwell. She also made an earnest, sweet, slightly bumbling speech about how much has changed since she saw us three years ago, but how hope is a force for good, and she got us to hold hands "Just to make it as hippy as possible".

Later, in my diary, I wrote "I love Florence Welch. She is amazing. Even when you've got a seat nearly at the very top of an arena, she makes you feel like she's singing and talking to you alone." Which really represents the atmosphere of the show, but particularly during 'South London Forever'.

The band followed 'South London Forever' with a mesmerising semi acoustic take on 'Patricia'. Before the song commenced, Florence made the Patti Smith connection explicit, and she also explained that the bit in the middle is about "toxic masculinity", which "isn't a problem in here" Earlier she'd remarked that there was a "very good energy, a very female energy" in the arena, which she liked, and in the speech before 'Patricia' she made it clear that she feels Florence + The Machine fans don't have any problems supporting women, which went down well.

The perennial anthem that is 'Dog Days Are Over' was dazzling and euphoric, with mass audience participation in the way of clapping and singing along. Florence asked us to put our phones away and to hug each other, which, amazingly, my section of the audience did.

'100 Years' and 'The End of Love' both stood out as being particularly mesmerising, and there was a suitably rousing version of 'Ship To Wreck' in-between the two. Florence got everyone to switch their phones on and hold them up to create a sky or stars for 'Cosmic Love', and the result was very pretty: A sea of little white 'stars'.

She went crowd running during 'Delilah' and followed it with some crowd bonding during 'What Kind Of Man'. It was interesting to watch those two songs on this tour compared to last, as I got a sense of how the songs have changed emotionally for her. She seems free of that time now and, as such, those two songs don't feel as visceral or as dark as they did three years ago.

Birmingham's Genting Arena, a sky full of stars for 'Cosmic Love'

When they left the stage at the end of the set, there was so much drumming of feet and clapping of hands that it sounded like an earthquake. You could feel the floor shaking beneath our feet.

They came back on and did the brooding 'Big God' and uplifting 'Shake It Out', and Florence persuaded the audience to be her choir in the latter case, which added to the sense of euphoria.

It took so long to get out of the seated section that we could see men in hard hats and hi vis dismantling all the gear on stage as the Arena staff swept glitter and plastic pint pots across the floor in the standing area with huge industrial brushes.

Then it was the slow moving hum of the crowd through the Arena, to the outside air, while trying to figure out which way to turn in order to get back to the train station. I followed the crowd, and studied various signposts while thinking "This doesn't look like the way I came in." At last I spotted a familiar bit of scenery and was relieved to realise that I was going the right way. Then it was up the stairs into the station, across the bridge, down the escalator and out again, now trying to remember how I'd successfully found my hotel in the end. I made it fairly quickly, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't the same route as last time.

The Florence + The Machine gig tiara in Birmingham, with diary

Following just over a week of medieval plague (or a particularly virulent throat infection if we're being accurate) combined with vertigo, I started Friday 23 November on a very low point, standing hunched over the kitchen sink, having a major coughing fit that ended with me being sick. A horrible way to start the day.

I had travelled to Birmingham for the previous week's Florence gig knowing I was coming down with a throat infection, but it hadn't really started by Friday morning so I expected that I'd be OK. And I was. Until the wee small hours of Saturday morning when the infection kicked in with a vengeance and I experienced a perfect storm of symptoms.

Needless to say, I didn't get much sleep in Birmingham on Friday night/Saturday morning and, what with having an extremely sensitive throat by morning, approached the serve yourself breakfast area with definite wariness: When you're at the hypersensitive throat stage of a throat infection, you tend to divide foods up into soft and scratchy foods. That said, even a single red lentil can cause merry hell with my throat when I'm really bad, so beyond yoghurt, blended soups, and ice-cream the world of food can become very unfriendly indeed.

I managed a weird breakfast of fruit, very carefully eaten cereal with lots of milk, and shedloads of fruit juice and mint tea. Then I got ambitious and nearly choked on a yoghurt.

Feeling decidedly fed up now, I figured I might as well pack and get a slightly earlier train home than I'd planned. I don't think I really saved much time by doing that though because I had to wait 40 minutes for a direct train to Manchester from Birmingham International, and when it arrived it was rammed to the gills. And remained so until Stoke.

You know it's a bad train when you can't even sit in the luggage rack because people have beaten you to it. I thought the worst was over after Stoke but, no, because what seemed like the entire population of Macclesfield under the age of 25 got on at that station and I then had to fight my way through them all to get off at Stockport.

A Virgin Cross Country train coming into Stockport in 1998. By Ryan Taylor, via flickr.
Used according to a creative commons licence. 

Just under a week later and I was feeling moderately better, despite the coughing fits, oh, and I had hardly any voice whatsoever, making communication a major challenge.

I'd booked the two tickets for Manchester Arena way back in May, in the fan pre-sale that took place two days before tickets went on sale. I was still working my day job at that point and, because both the pre-sale and the actual sale started on weekdays at 10am, I'd concocted a plan that involved diving onto a staff laptop at morning break and hoping like hell there would still be some tickets left.

In the end though, I was off sick on the day of the pre-sale and was so exhausted that I wasn't sure I could drag myself out of bed in time for it. The result being that I booked my tickets for Manchester Arena at the table in the kitchen, in my dressing gown, after breakfast, bang on 10am. "That was easy" I thought, feeling too relieved to be excited, and promptly went back to bed.

Bethany, who I was going with, had wanted seated tickets whereas I'd wanted standing. I was happy to accommodate her but, in the end, the decision was made for us by the pre-sale: By the time I got to the ticket selection stage of the process there were no two seated tickets left for Manchester Arena that were next to each other. Standing it was.

Bethany happened to be off sick that day too so she didn't get my email until the next day when we were both back in work. We'd already spent an entire day a few weeks previously deconstructing the video to 'Hunger' when we should have been working, now we were both very excited about the Arena gig.

As it turns out though, it wasn't Bethany who I ended up going to the Arena with. A few weeks before the gig, she texted me to let me know that she couldn't come. I did consider selling her ticket for her but she was adamant that I should take someone else. I decided to ask David.

Earlier in the year we'd spent a happy afternoon at Pear Mill, ogling vintage that neither of us could afford, and one of my first social engagements after I left my job in the summer had been a day out in Marple with David. It ended with us sitting outside in the sunshine in his back garden, reflecting on the simple things in life.

8th Day were holding a Christmas Meal in December and, while texting him about that, I asked "Would you like to see Florence + The Machine at Manchester Arena on the 23 November?" It felt like a bit of a long shot but, on the other hand, he does really, really like Patrick Wolf, and I've always felt that Florence + The Machine and Patrick Wolf are essentially two sides of the same coin.

"I'd totally be up for it" he replied "I haven't been to a gig in ages, never mind an Arena show".

We were on.

David hadn't seen Florence before and, because I felt it would help him to enjoy it more if it was a surprise, I deliberately didn't tell him what to expect. I just said "They are not your typical Arena band". Which might have been a bit wrong of me, given that I've yet to see anyone else in an Arena setting. But somehow, I do think I'm right. I really don't think anyone else approaches an Arena show in quite the same way as Florence + The Machine.

Florence Welch by Vincent Haycock

On the morning of the 23rd I had some back and forth with David via text re what you can/can't take into the Arena, and the day disappeared quite quickly after that. He was teaching that day so I'd arranged to meet him at 8th Day at 5pm for tea and we'd walk over to the Arena at 6pm, which is when the doors opened.

Once in we admired the merch and people watched for a bit before watching Wet. We were nearish the front, but not too near. We didn't want to push and shove our way through.

Florence + The Machine came on at 8:45pm and, as I expected, it was the same set as at Birmingham. While Florence was her usual sparkling self, I think the energy was different to Birmingham, probably because Birmingham was only the second date on the tour, but also because the crowd energy wasn't quite as wild in Manchester as it was in Birmingham. It was still high, just not quite as wild.

Florence very sweetly mentioned in her intro to 'South London Forever' that her brother in law is from Manchester and that her two year old niece was here: They were introducing her to her Mancunian roots. It was interesting hearing Florence talk about how it's been "A bad few years" since she last saw us, as it had a different kind of connotation in Manchester Arena than in Birmingham. It felt much more about the Arena bombing than about Brexit and Trump. I'm not sure how well her message of hope went over in that context, because thinking about the Arena bombing probably put people on edge in a way that Brexit and Trump probably don't (ie; you can be furious about both but the pain is different), but her message was clearly sincerely meant and, I think, appreciated.

The crowd in the standing section were great. David made friends with a guy with two women in front of me, and I made friends with the girl next to me when we held hands during 'South London Forever' and I hugged her during 'Dog Days'. Everyone was fully into it and going for it. Which is ultimately why I wanted to be in the standing section in the first place, truth be told.

Florence talked, both in Manchester and in Birmingham, about how grateful she was to the fans for taking and understanding her songs over the past ten years, and how it means a lot to her because we understand even when her family, friends, partners don't.

I think a great example in Manchester of that understanding was the rapturous response 'Hunger' received in the standing section, with everyone singing along and jumping up and down. Given the subject matter of the song, and Florence's initial hesitancy to release it, that felt very powerful. In the same way that the collective singalong of 'Shake It Out' is pure joy, and Florence orchestrating the perfect in the moment bit, minus phones, in 'Dog Days' is lifting it up to a higher plane.

When Florence went crowd running during 'Delilah' we spotted her a couple of times in the seated sections, then she re-appeared at the back of the standing section, raised up above the crowd, possibly on someone's shoulders. Afterwards she went down to the front of the standing section for 'What Kind of Man', pressing heads with members of the audience.

The encores were 'Big God' and 'Shake It Out'. After 'Shake It Out', and after Florence had said goodnight and look after each other, we could see her hugging and talking to people at the very front of the standing section, closely watched over by security.

Afterwards, David said how much he'd enjoyed it. He loved what Florence was trying to do by way of creating a collective emotional experience, and he loved how into it the crowd were. The whole thing seemed to have moved him very profoundly and we talked about it as we walked back to Piccadilly.

It's very hard to put the impact of a Florence + The Machine gig into words, but it is a deeply emotional experience, which is why I think it resonates so much with those of us in emotional and mental turmoil. It's also perhaps why a lot of (especially male) music critics don't get it: Florence Welch is moving us on an emotional level, in a sincere and non manipulative way, by saying and singing about things that often feel very personal. Pain. Rage. Hurt. Delirium. Fear. All the extremes, including extreme joy and being out of control. Anyone with anxiety and depression can relate to that.

She has changed since I last saw her live: She seems more comfortable with herself, happier, less scared, less hurting. Not everything has changed though: She is still the politest person I've ever seen on stage, and she still comes across as someone who can't quite believe that they get to do this for a living.

Florence Welch by Vincent Haycock

It is interesting to watch her being explicitly feminist and slightly political. I don't know if the events of the past two years have driven her to it, or if it's that she now feels established enough to risk saying what she thinks. It could be both. It's not as though she's spoken about #MeToo on stage, or said "Fuck Brexit, Fuck Trump", but she's said enough, on stage, in song, on social media, in interviews for the fans to know how she feels. And that's OK.

There is something almost slyly subversive about watching her running about the stage in a sea of chiffon, her hair streaming out behind her, and having her talk about toxic masculinity and female energy.

In addition to The Voice, there's also that slightly lopsided charm about her that includes the ability to fall over on stage stylishly and a grin that lights up her whole face. The flaws, and the relatable realness of Florence Welch, are equally as much part of the charm as the talent is. And I think that's a good thing.