Florence + The Machine: Missing links, missing songs

Back in 2016, still very much on a giddy high from seeing Florence + The Machine headline British Summertime, I stumbled across three songs on YouTube by the band that I had never heard before.

The songs in question had clearly been uploaded illegally by fans and, mistakenly it seemed to me, flagged as being songs from the How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful album.

I scoured the internet looking for clues that the three songs - 'Pure Feeling', 'As Far As I Could Get' and 'Conductor' - might have been released as extra tracks on deluxe or international editions of the album, but I never found any trace of them on track listings.

I've always got the impression, from the scant amount of information I've been able to find online, that the three songs do date from the recording sessions for the How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful album. I did, eventually, track down 'As Far As I Could Get', which had been the B Side to the 2015 Record Store Day 12" of 'What Kind of Man', but I was never able to establish the origins of 'Pure Feeling' or 'Conductor'.

As is well known, Florence Welch was emotionally and mentally very unhappy at the time that the album was recorded. She later said that the incredibly beautiful, but harrowing, 'Various Storms & Saints', was a song that she campaigned to have taken off the album because she felt it was "too sad".

If she felt that 'Various Storms & Saints' was going to be too sad for fans, it's easy to see why 'Pure Feeling', 'As Far As I Could Get' and 'Conductor' didn't make the final cut: While the three songs are sonically amazing, they are also - emotionally - the sound of a woman in absolute turmoil.

'Pure Feeling' is an incredibly catchy piece of guitar led pop, in which Welch is singing towards the higher end of her range throughout. The lyrics seem to concern an almost obsessively intense heartbreak that is haunting her to the extent that she is in mental and emotional freefall, the overall effect of the song being to showcase a particularly naked form of vulnerability which makes for a distinctly uneasy listen.

Similarly, the sprawling 'As Far As I Could Get' begins with Welch singing softly and sadly before upping the tension and unleashing the full power of her voice. This is total romantic devastation wrapped up in the stylings of post Patti Smith stream of conscious, with Welch trapped in California, surrounded by sun and palm trees, struggling to come to terms with a particularly traumatic break up.

There's a photo of her in her recent book, Useless Magic, that seems to really sum up this period: Welch is pictured lying by the side of a swimming pool that is lit by brilliant sunshine, far too bright and glittering for the picture to have been taken in the UK. She is dressed scruffily in shorts and a t-shirt which bears the slogan 'HELL'. Her face is turned away from the camera, gazing at the blue water in the pool, her hair is tied back, one hand trails in the water. She looks both haunted and absolutely miserable.

This sense of being haunted is perhaps at it's strongest in the song 'Conductor' which seems to go beyond sadness into anger and, finally, to reach a sort of rueful acceptance. As with it's two sister tracks (I can't help but think of them as interconnected...) the sheer naked honesty draws you in, even as it makes you feel slightly uncomfortable.

Welch has always been a refreshingly honest performer. That this is combined with a love of privacy and tendency towards anxiety can't help but, I suspect, make her professional life difficult. It doesn't seem to stop her though. Just as the How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful album was the child of Lungs and Ceremonials, 2018's High As Hope very much builds on the work begun by How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful. Not just sonically, but also lyrically and thematically.

I can understand why 'Pure Feeling', 'As Far As I Could Get' and 'Conductor' were not more widely released, just as I can understand why 'Which Witch' didn't go beyond demo stage. Those songs are jaw droopingly good but they're also incredibly dark and there comes a point, it's to be suspected, when a move towards the light feels a saner option in the long term for any performer. That doesn't mean that darkness is no longer a part of Welch's work - clearly it is - just that there are points when it feels right to say 'No'.

Worshipping Florence Welch

I recently reviewed the new Florence + The Machine album for The F-Word. It's the second Florence album I've reviewed for the site, and I even submitted a review of Lungs when it came out but, for various reasons, it didn't run. This was perhaps for the best, in retrospect, as I was rather, shall we say, overexcited upon reviewing it. I'm probably still pretty excited in my review of How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful, but I think I'm a bit more capable of reigning it in these days.

I don't think it was until 'Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up)' was released that I realised just how much I'd been missing full on, emotionally drenched, powerfully vocalled, dramatic, left of centre, pop music. If you haven't been exposed to sonically powerful female vocalists (in the contemporary sense, rather than the historic sense) much recently, you tend to forgot what you're missing and compensate with music that is... if not actually inferior, just not quite what the doctor ordered. I was emerging from a particularly intense week having a semi religious experience to Laura Nyro's Eli And The Thirteenth Confession the week 'Rabbit Heart' was released as a single, and I'd had it on pre-order for weeks, waiting for it...

It helped as well that I found Welch interesting as a personality, in that she seemed to be possessed of intelligence, have refreshingly sophisticated listening habits, and an engaging personality, which is not always a given. I often avoid finding out about the personnel of bands I like because they either don't capture my interest that way, or I don't want to be disappointed, but I found myself liking Welch from the start, which is quite rare for me. I even bought NME for the first time in years in 2009 because she was on the cover (a woman on the cover of NME in 2009 was a pretty rare occurrence in itself, let alone an artist I like as well) and again in 2012 when they put her on the cover again.

While I was far from in at the beginning, not really becoming a dedicated fan until 2009, I have watched the rise and rise of Florence + The Machine with interest and excitement. I have never seen the band live, and they now play at such large venues I probably wouldn't want to, but I did watch the bands surprise headline slot at Glastonbury in June, courtesy of the BBC, and thoroughly enjoyed it.

This third album is a worthy successor to its two siblings, and hopefully the band will continue to innovate and create exciting music for many years to come.