Interview with Glastonbury-bound Florence Welch

"What do you mean did I break the 'no contact rule'? What's that?"
Florence Mary Leontine Welch is looking puzzled – and ever so slightly alarmed. The 28-year-old redhead is primly perched on a couch in a luxurious suite in the Covent Garden Hotel, coming across like a slimmer witchy version of Garth Brooks in an all-black ensemble, replete with sharp pointed boots, long strings of beads and a wide brimmed hat.
It's a sunny afternoon in her native London, and this is only her second press interview to promote Florence + The Machine's new album, How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful. So little wonder Hot Press' opening question about the lovelorn theme of the song 'Caught' seems to have thrown her somewhat. The singer stares in silence as the no contact rule is explained (essentially cutting off all communication after an ex after a relationship break-up).
Eventually she says, "Oh gosh! Well...I didn't break it!" Then she throws back her head and cackles like a madwoman. "Ha, ha, ha!!"
It quickly transpires that Florence laughs quite a lot, even at things that aren't especially funny. There's a manically eccentric energy about her; she's constantly fidgeting in her seat or twisting one of the many oversized rings decorating her fingers (the only two unadorned digits have green ring tattoos). Her sentences, spoken in a vaguely posh English accent, often tend to come in fits and false starts. "Well...the thing is...you know...like...I suppose..."
Once she gets going, though, she's fine. In truth, despite the slight verbal discombobulations, Florence has every reason to be confident. Brash, blod and bursting with infectious tunes, her eagerly awaited third album, How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful, seems set to solidify her reputation as this generation's Kate Bush (albeit with a slightly wilder bent). However, it's been a full four years since the release of her last album, 2011's mega-selling Ceremonials. So why the long delay?
"Yeah, there was Ceremonials, and that was four years ago, and we toured that for two years about," she explains. "And then I thought.... it was time to just have a bit of time off." Then that wicked cackle again, "Ha, ha, ha!"
Did she write any of the new songs while she was touring the last album?
"Yeah, the song 'How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful' was written towards the end of that Ceremonials tour so it's almost like I did a full circle back to the first song that was written," she says. "I just had a bit of time to try and have a bit of a life outside of touring and traveling all the time, and I sort of finally moved out of my mum's living room! I was writing songs throughout the whole period of time, here and there, and then that year happened..."
She laughs again before continuing. "And Markus [Dravs, producer] got me in and was 'Let's do a track, let's do something!' because I'd been living and writing for like a year, and me and Markus had been talking about making a record together. We hadn't solidified aything, but in February he was, like, 'Come in and let's do a trial run or whatever for a month or something'. And I got here and he's, like, 'Alright we're making a record!' 'OK!"
Recorded in London and LA, the album was a full year in the making. "Yeah it took a year, that's the longest record I've ever made and that wasn't like faffing around. But I did spend quite a bit of time in LA as well, writing there, and then I'd come back and we'd be in the studio, but it was a real..." Her voice trails off and the rest of the sentence evaporates into thin air.
Her perfect complexion is as milky white as ever, so presumably she was actually writing in LA as opposed to hanging out on Venice Beach.
"It's a funny thing," she muses. "Like, it's almost too nice because you're like, 'Oh, I've written this three, four minute song that's all chorus'... and then it doesn't make it to the record! But we did get a few songs out of that. It was more, I think, the feeling of LA translated into the music, that sense of driving a lot in cars and seeing these big skies. The more American feel of the record, I think, comes from spending that time there. [First cut] 'What Kind of Man' was actually written in LA."
Although sunny California was definitely an influence, most of the album was recorded in London. "Some of it was in LA, but a lot of it was recorded 15 minutes from my house, a bike ride. I just rode my bike. It was a very quiet and kind of contained existence I had for a while. I would go to LA and it would be a bit of a fantasy with the big blue skies, and then you come back and squirrel away in London and kind of write it all down."
Florence was born and bred in London. Does she still find the city inspiring?
"Yeah, I mean it's where I grew up and it's where all my closest, oldest friends are, and my family,' she states. "Everyone was going on travelling when we left school, and I was like, 'Well, I want to go to art college here and I want to be in a band.' I thought if anything was ever going to happen, musically, it would be in London, and I find it incredibly inspiring. LA is big and beautiful, but in London I ride my bike and you can walk and be in a city. LA is wonderful, but it's like a big car park."
Does she drive?
"Ha! No, I don't drive!" she shrieks. "No one would let me drive! Ha, ha, ha!"
Does she get recognised much when out and about?
"Actually not that much," she says, shrugging indifferently. "Not very much. I don't know now though, I've been away. Since the single ['What Kind of Man'] came out and stuff, I've been a bit away, so I don't know. I haven't been here and around. The single, the video, was a mix of this idea of purgatory, but also we wanted it to feel a bit based in reality so I was wearing my own clothes, and I was wearing this hat and I was like, 'Fuck, now I'm just going to be wearing this hat walking around, it's like a big sign!"
She could always take it off...
"No, I love this hat!" she laughs, touching its brim. "But it's funny, you wear it and then it's like a big neon sign, but actually, I don't really get bothered, I don't know. I'm going to go walking around at lunchtime and see what happens, but usually everyone's so nice anyway. I don't mind talking to people so it's fine, really."
A few weeks ago, during her first BBC Radio 1 interview in quite some time, she told presenter Zane Lowe that she'd had something of a minor nervous breakdown during her sabbatical year. The album's opening track, 'Ship To Wreck', begins with the verse, "Don't touch the sleeping pills/ they mess with my head/ dredging up great white sharks/ swimming in the bed." So did she go through a period of attempting to sink the career she has so successfully built up?
"I think so, I think so," she nods. "I definitely have a very self-destructive streak, and I think I wrote that after I somehow managed to end up on MTV News drunk in a bar when I got filmed being really drunk... and I chucked a shot over my shoulder and then crowd-surfed off the stage. I was like, 'Oh shit...' (laughs) I was like, 'Fuck!' Because you know, I wasn't really working, I was writing, I was in LA back and forth, but without structure it was like, 'This party could go on forever!' And then it maybe went on a little too long and then... you end up drunk on American TV!"
You could have ended up in worse places!
"Yeah, at my local Tiki bar!" she laughs. "I was just thinking about that kind of feeling where you're just like, 'Oh, what have I said? What have I done?' I've got a bit of a chaos button. I'm much more restrained with it now, but I think that's there."
Well, when you come off a lengthy tour and you have plenty of cash in the bank and you’ve had loads of success, it’s probably quite easy at that point to completely fuck it up, isn’t it?
She sighs and nods her head. “I think so ...”
Was anyone your guardian angel during the chaos?
“Well, because I went from living on tour with my (inverts fingers) ‘tour family’ and living with my family at home, I was suddenly like completely on my own now,” she explains. “And it was that sensation of, like, if you wake up on a Tuesday morning and the house is completely smashed, it’s your life, you can’t just go on to the next show in the next city. What I really had wanted was to have a bit of a life and do maybe more the domestic side of things that I missed for four or five years while that whirlwind was carrying on, but actually I was the one making it.
“It wasn’t like I was touring and it was because of that,” she continues. “I thought, ‘I am creating this!’ So it was kind of figuring out that side of myself, and finding other stuff that made me happy, and how did I want to make this record and live my life, which was good because it was new. It was a shock, but it was a good shock.”
Inspired by the messy end of a long-term relationship, Florence + The Machine’s debut, Lungs, was probably the break-up album of 2009. Breakthrough single ‘Dog Days Are Over’, heartache anthem ‘Drumming Song’ and her brilliantly reworked cover of Candi Staton’s ‘You’ve Got The Love’ were amongst the most ubiquitous songs on the airwaves that year, and eventually pushed the album to No 1 in the UK and elsewhere. She patched things up with the same ex before writing and recording Ceremonials. However, some of the standout tracks on How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful also seem to deal with lovesickness. There’s the aforementioned ‘Caught’, of course, but on ‘Queen Of Peace’, she sings, “Suddenly I’m only overcome/ Dissolving like the setting sun/ Like a bolt into oblivion/ Cos you’re driving me away.”
So, dare we ask, how’s her love life going at the moment?
“Well, I think I’m in a much more peaceful place than I was at the start of making the record,” she proffers, guardedly. “There were a lot of things I needed to try and understand that were difficult... and actually things are much calmer, which is nice.”
Does she perhaps creatively thrive on romantic upheaval?
“That’s it, like, you’re always mining your own life,” she nods. “I took that year, and it was a very up and down time, which in some ways... (pauses) Getting to the end of the record I was like, ‘My God.’ But from that, because it was so up and down, there was a lot of stuff to write about, but I think it was just like... (pauses). Again, you’re always on tour and there’s always this kind of distance and actually when you come to land there is no distance, you have to sit with yourself and figure out how you are in a relationship, and it kind of unravels you a little bit because you’ve never had to really deal with it - there’s always a gig at the end of it.
“So I think this time with that year of more self- reflection I was like, ‘Why do I keep getting drawn back into these quite disruptive patterns? What is it about them that’s so attractive?’ And I think a lot of the record is trying to understand that. It’s a funny thing as well, because I find it quite hard to say how I feel. I have to write it in songs, and it’s almost, like, would I write songs if I was better at talking about my feelings? Would I just have good relationships? But it’s like a chicken or an egg thing, you know, what came first? Do I make songs because I get stuck on things?”
When’s the last time she played a live show?
“At the Dome,” she says. “A couple of weeks ago, actually. Yeah, it was a really small one in Temple Park. But I think that’s kind of part of it. Not playing live as well. Leading up to the show I felt a weird sense of mourning almost because this time of just making something quite quietly and putting all the pieces together, the songs all became like little talismans as a way of understanding something that was confusing, and it was almost like, ‘Now I’ve got to let it go!’ But afterwards – it always is – it’s such a cathartic thing.
“I almost forget how much it sort of helps me get things back together. So afterwards I felt so much more at peace with everything than I have. You’re still in it when you’re making the songs, and it’s a weird thing as well because I think it makes it harder because you’re like ‘Oh, I’ll make something about this, so now I have to (shouts) KEEP THINKING ABOUT IT ALL THE TIME!’ Ha, ha, ha!”
Does she still emotionally experience songs when singing them repeatedly on tour?
“It’s weird what happens because, when you’re actually making it, you’re in a studio,” she explains. “Because it’s contained you’re still having to hold it so it’s hard because you’re just really in those feelings, but there’s something about the alchemy of performance - when you can share it with people, it almost turns into something different. It’s very liberating. So I was just like, ‘Is this going to be a nightmare to perform?’ I was worried, but actually it was fine - it’s transforming in you, like water into wine or something. It changes into something different. Whether that’s happy or sad I don’t know, but it doesn’t feel desperate.”
The album closes with a song called ‘Mother’: “Oh lord won’t you leave me/ Leave me just like this/ Cos I belong to the ground now/ I want no more than this.”
“‘Mother’ was just about when you can’t escape a feeling,” she says. “It’s kind of wanting to be turned into something that could get to be bigger, to become a cloud, or to become a bird, or to become a tree, so you could be free from what it was that was keeping you down. And it’s kind of the one that reminds me most of Ceremonials, that idea of transcendence and wanting to be out of body, to be something other than human, because if you’re human you have to be sad. You have to, like, deal with stuff.”
She laughs again. “I want to be a tree!”
When’s the last time Florence shed a tear?
She pauses for thought. “When was it?” she says, scrunching her brow. “You know what, for me,
I haven’t cried in quite a while. I mean, I think – when did I cry...what would it have been about? I’m quite emotional, as you might have imagined, so I’m sure it was...”
She pauses again before suddenly brightening. “Oh, I remember. And it was really sad. I don’t want to talk about it! (laughs) It was recent!”
What really makes her blood boil?
“What makes me angry?” she mulls. “It’s difficult because actually I think the side of me that is angry and visceral seems to always get reserved exclusively for songs. I think I find the feeling of anger almost so overpowering, like in an argument, that I don’t actually know how to deal with it. Me angry in real life is always complete... it’s like it’s too much. A shutdown. So I think that’s why a lot of the songs come out as visceral as they are because it’s an outlet for that emotion. Maybe I feel very strongly, I’m just not quite sure how to process it. If I work that out eventually maybe I won’t make songs anymore!”
The album tour will kick off this summer and continue for at least a year (and probably more). She’ll be stopping off in Stradbally for an Electric Picnic headliner in early September.
“I’ve played Electric Picnic before!” she enthuses. “We all ended up sleeping in this tent. There was a tent that had all these old four-poster beds in it, and someone found this massive crate of red wine, so I ended up having a really great time. We played really early on, we ended up having a blast. I remember lining up all these chairs, and I don’t remember where this tent was! It might have been the catering tent, but there was a four-poster bed in it and we ended up, like, living in it and lining up all the chairs and you had to walk on all the tops of them, I remember that. But yeah, I had a great time.”
Presumably she’s looking forward to going back?
“I am, yeah. Hopefully I can find that four-poster bed again! It’s great. There were about four people sleeping in it.”
Despite their own massive popularity, the biggest crowds Florence + The Machine have played for came during their month long stint on U2’s 360 Tour.
“It was amazing,” she recalls. “Because the shows were in the round, it’s kind of like being a gladiator, it’s like a coliseum! You go out and you’re in the middle and you have to prove yourself, but it was an amazing experience! I’ve never played that big – it was huge.”
Does that size of an audience ever feel intimidating?
She shakes her head. “It’s almost like when it’s that big you’re just like ‘Oh!’ You feel like you can do anything! It’s so big! Smaller crowds are more intimidating, like the little gig we played at the Dome... but it’s nice getting to talk to people and interact. I think coming back to this record feels a lot like coming back to how it was at the start, which is nice.”
Which is her preferred artistic environment – the studio or the stage?
“Performance is actually where it all makes sense,” she admits. “Performance is where the introvert and the extrovert all get to kind of meld. I guess it’s where the idea of what you’re making suddenly becomes real. It’s freedom as well, to me, the stage. The studio... I do think on that time [recording the album], although I was dealing with difficult things and I was going through something, that almost the structure and quietness were good for me. Markus became like such a father figure, like, ‘Get lights on your bike, be here at this time, lunch at this time,’ and actually after a year where everything just seemed to be completely normal to have that, I think about it really...although I guess from the outside it would look like I was finding it really hard and really bummed out, the structure of it and the actual quiet, meditative process of making it was really good for me. I really think back on it fondly, even though everyone was like, ‘You’ve been wearing an anorak for three months; you’re crying all the time!’ ‘I know, but I think this is just how you make a record!’”
The suite’s buzzer sounds, signalling the arrival of the next interviewer and the end of our brief time together. Just before Hot Press leaves, though, can she sum the new record up in a few words?
“What was I thinking? I was thinking about an alternative title, which was something about boys, booze and boobs or something! But I’m quite glad I went with How Big How Blue How Beautiful!”
Can Florence Welch explain that title?
“That song was written at the end of the Ceremonials tour,” she says. “It was one of my favorite tours, actually, that we’d done around America. We were getting over the hump, the last tour, and actually everything just seemed incredibly exciting, every city we went to on this tour was like...we were having so much fun and it was just a sense of being sort of in love with what I was doing and being really happy wherever I was.
“It was at every place because of the way you felt, it became like a magic place,” she continues. “And what’s interesting is that then I had this year where things might have been tumultuous, and things didn’t work out, but through making the record, the feeling that I came back to was the feeling that I had at the start. That’s why I wanted to call it that, because, although there are things that happen and there are conflicts on the record, I feel like it was so hopeful for me because in the making of it, it really did something. So it came back to How Big How Blue How Beautiful!”

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How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful is out now on Island. Florence + The Machine play the Electric Picnic in September. She also plays Oddessey Arena, Belfast on Sept 9 and 3Arena, Dublin on Sept 10