Originally written and recorded as part of the sessions for the fourth Florence + The Machine album, High As Hope, 'Light of Love' was a previously unreleased track that Florence Welch chose to release in April 2020 as a fundraiser for the Intensive Care Society, donating 100% of her royalties.
In-keeping with the themes of High As Hope, 'Light of Love' is an unflinchingly honest ugly-beautiful slice of self examination, the brutal lyrics contrasted by the delicate baroque pop and choir like harmonies of the musical arrangement and orchestration. An unusual choice for a charity fundraiser, but one that - weirdly - seems to work.
You can watch many of the songs from this GMA 2018 gig in single song segments on YouTube, but it's not available to watch in full. Similarly, there doesn't seem to be any professionally filmed or good quality full live concert sets from the High As Hope tour of 2018 and 2019 to watch, at least not on YouTube. You can find Florence's set from The Biggest Weekend in Swansea in 2018 on iplayer though.
With all of this in mind, the full live set I've chosen for you today is a really good NPR Tiny Desk set, with a stripped down Machine of Florence, Rob, Hazel and Tom, which you can watch here. It's a lovely set. You can also watch Florence's lockdown at home performance of 'Light of Love', released to raise funds for The Intensive Care Society, here.
'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.
