Florence + The Machine - Light Of Love

Florence Welch has made me cry again.

'Light of love' is a song that was recorded during the sessions for 2018's High As Hope album. It was left off the album and was released on Friday by Florence as a fundraiser for The Intensive Care Society, with 100% of her income from the track going to the charity.

While an incredibly harrowing song on one level, detailing as it does alcoholic blackouts, panic and anxiety and near death experiences, it's also really quite a hopeful song. There is a real sense of resolution and a desire to change as the song progresses.

Thematically, 'Light Of Love' seems to sit somewhere between the guilt and recrimination of 'Grace' and the Florence Welch who ruined her sisters birthday with her acid fuelled antics, and the honest tales of misspent youth detailed in 'South London Forever'. It's sadder than 'South London Forever' (ultimately a wry, funny look at her teenage years in Camberwell) and it's at least as sad as 'Grace' (the song from High As Hope that tends to make me cry the most), but there's an echo of 'Grace' in the line about crawling into her sister's bed after a dose of the horrors, saying 'I think I did too much'. It ends with the repeated affirmation that, haven't learnt to face facts, and face the world, "I must not look away".

Musically the song reflects the stripped down nature of the High As Hope sessions as well as it's searingly personal themes, but I feel like I understand why it wasn't included on the album. Much as I would have loved 'As Far As I Could Get' to have been included on How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful in 2015, I recognise that in the case of both songs, they would have disrupted the musical flow of their respective albums. Assembling an album, and getting the running order right, is an artform and part of the art is deciding what to take out as much as what to put in.