Navel gazing journalism post or... An ode to editing

Trying to review a Florence + The Machine album is akin to attempting to unravel an onion or a ball of twine to navigate a labyrinth. You find yourself poring over individual tracks, trying to decode them like an undergraduate working on a dissertation. You find yourself having sudden brainwaves in unexpected places, like on the bus on the way into work. And then frantically scribbling post its to yourself in the office and stuffing them into the pocket of your work trousers first thing in the morning as your colleague walks through the door.*

While this isn't the first time that I've reviewed the work of Florence + The Machine, it is the first time that I've been invited to do so by a publication.** The invite came from the Reviews Editor at Louder Than War back in March. 

I haven't written for Louder Than War for nearly two years. This is because my main work for them previously has been live reviews and I haven't been to a gig since February 2020. I did, however, review Skin's memoir for them back in summer 2020. As such, it seemed a good idea to reacquaint myself with the style and format of the album reviews ahead of time and to makes notes on the four singles from Dance Fever that had already been released. This was a good move because I didn't receive the promo stream until Wednesday 11th May, two days before release day. 

That evening, several hours after I'd got home from work, I sat down with my laptop and headphones and opened up the stream. It felt vaguely surreal to be listening to Dance Fever late at night, in the dark, with my headphones plugged into my laptop. 

Drink too much coffee and listen to Florence + The Machine

I'd already resigned myself, and my editor, to not having the review ready before release day so that first evening I just listened in the dark to the stream. Afterwards, I made notes on my first impressions, closed the laptop, and went to bed.

I figured that I had a few days to figure out Dance Fever and settle such important questions as "Should I give it 9 and a half out of 10 or 10 out of 10?" 

On Thursday night, after my second listen of the stream, I found myself lying awake and fretting: "If Lungs and High As Hope are both 10 out of 10, and Ceremonials is a 9 out of 10, does that mean How Big How Blue How Beautiful is 8 out of 10? or 7 out of 10?" 

I really like Dance Fever, but it didn't make me so excited that I was giddy and sleep deprived for a month afterwards (like Lungs did) or sob uncontrollably (Like High As Hope did). Is that what 10 out of 10 means? I'm not sure. It feels a bit of a misuse of my critical faculties if I'm deciding the star rankings of an album based on how extreme a reaction my central nervous system has to it. I mean, I was pretty mentally unwell when both Lungs and High As Hope came out, and that probably needs taking into consideration. "It will probably be 10 out of 10" I concluded, before fretting that it would look to the (sometimes critical) readers of Louder Than War as though I was fangirling, not doing journalism if I gave the album 10 out of 10. 

Saturday 14th March:

Once I'd done the food shop and listened to the repeat of The News Quiz at lunch time, I drafted and re-drafted my review until 8pm when I closed the laptop and headed through to the kitchen. There was a particularly well put together documentary about Castlemorton airing on Radio 4 and I wanted to get some tea. 

Sunday 15th March:

In the morning I felt I was ready to put my draft into Wordpress and add the videos, images and links. And generally get the SEO and formatting sorted. After I got back from the launderette, I set about doing this.

After six hours of solid editing the SEO and readability widgets in Wordpess were doing my head in.

I had felt pretty good about the review until I put it into the site and the readability widget flagged up a load of issues with it. Mainly to do with the passive tense and overlong sentences. This is probably natures way of reminding me that I've spent far too much time recently editing book chapters and trying to persuade literary agents to read them. And that I should have spent more time remembering how to write like a journalist.

All the videos, images and links were in the post by this point and the SEO light had gone green, but the readability monitor still had a red frown-y face on it and I was starting to worry about the length of the review and whether the structure was coherent enough. I found myself looking back at my review of High As Hope for The F-Word in 2018, and wondering why my review of Dance Fever wasn't as good. I mean, I was on anti-depressants and anti-anxiety pills when I wrote that one. I'm only on anti-histamines now. Surely that should make me a better writer?

At just after quarter past 7pm I closed my laptop and put it on to re-charge. Then I went through to the kitchen, flicked on the radio, and heated up the soup I'd made earlier after getting back from the launderette. Radio 4 was five minutes into what turned out to be Carys Eleri: Lovecraft (Not The Sex Shop In Cardiff), and it was so Welsh, so surreal, so weird, so completely over the top in its mix of musical theatre, sci fi and despairing takes on lockdown that even the continuity announcer sounded slightly stunned at the end of it. Note to self: Must listen again. 

I decided to make a coffee and vanilla milkshake with the remaining iced coffee because I could tell that it was going to be a long, long night.

Monday 16th May:

Woke up at twenty to six this morning knowing the alarm for work was going to be going off at 6am. Felt strong sense of injustice and decided to have a five minute lie in. Really wanted a 30 minute (at least) lie in but didn't fancy the abject hell of getting the bus after 8am. 

One of the disadvantages of reviewing an album using a promo stream is that there's a risk you'll get things wrong when it comes to attributing authorship of tracks or who produced what. I've a horrible feeling I might have done this, but hopefully not.

In a related note, I probably also paid far less attention to the album artwork for Dance Fever than I did to the artwork for High As Hope in 2018. This might be because I really, really like the artwork for High As Hope, but it's also because there wasn't as much time to consider it with Dance Fever. I realised after I'd submitted my review to my editor late last night that the image of Florence on the back of the CD of Dance Fever reminded me of Janis Joplin on the cover to Pearl, rather than giving off Victorian funeral tradition vibes as I'd felt previously.*** Not sure that anyone needs to know this, but it kept my mind occupied on the bus into work this morning.

This thought then caused me to muse on how your feelings about albums you've reviewed change over time. This is especially the case with albums you love that you continue listening to long after the review is done. There's always at least one epiphany about a specific song that you read a certain way and later end up re-evaluating and reading differently. Sometimes you end up reading the entire album differently because you end up building a relationship with it, and that relationship inevitably changes over time. 

You can read my review of Florence + The Machine's Dance Fever over at Louder Than War

* I don't own a smartphone. I was very late to phones generally and I am the world's slowest texter so scribbling cryptic notes to myself on scraps of paper is quicker. 

** I reviewed Florence's four previous albums for The F-Word. This means I either pitched the reviews to the Music Editor at the time or, when I was the Music Editor, I basically commissioned myself to write them.

*** My friend David and I went to the People's History Museum in about 2011 when they had an exhibition on funeral traditions and rituals in Victorian England. I have never forgotten this.