Mechanics Of The Heart

A
t the risk of angering the all-seeing Julie Andrews, let’s start at the very end.

My interview with gypsy diva and pop powerhouse Florence Welch is in the can, so I want to forget about medieval battles and Frida Kahlo for the evening, something that’s proving terribly difficult. Yup, everyone and their uncle wants to know what Ms. Welch is like, how she looked, what she was wearing, what she’s been up to, if she’s single… One friend even asks what she smells like, but I regret that I do not get paid enough to sniff my interviewees.
To my absolute shock, even my mam knows who Florence Welch is, which, if this can be taken as a measure of notoriety, makes her as famous as Pope Benedict XV and Michael Bublé, and more famous than Lady Gaga or Facebook. Granted, that might be stretching it a bit, but in three short years, the London lass has not only become a bona fide celebrity, but sauntered into that elite group of artists recognisable only by their first name (I’ll bet a certain lamp-toting Victorian war nurse is rolling in her grave).
The night trails along and still, more questions. Is she really as tall as she looks? Is her hair really that colour? Does she really drink like a sailor? I can’t blame anyone for wanting to know what the elusive 25 year-old is like in the flesh. The enduring image of Florence Welch is a statuesque, flame-tressed banshee bellowing to the rafters, her arms thrown wide to embrace an adoring crowd. Yet in interviews, she looks fragile as china, perpetually fidgeting with her hands and stumbling over her words. You don’t have to write about pop stars for a living to think, “What gives?”

the location for our interview is the quainter-than-quaint Portobello Hotel in London’s Notting Hill, which feels as if it were built especially for Florence. A converted neoclassical mansion, it’s a tiny, elegant place cloaked in red velvet interiors, with scene-stealing ferns filling every available space.
Flo’s room on the ground floor is overpowered by a ginormous antique tester bed, which currently serves as a makeshift office for her younger sister and personal assistant Grace. Grace, who is tall, like Florence, but curvier and with blonde cropped hair, is presumably sitting in on all of today’s interviews in case any question rubs the elder Welch up the wrong way. Luckily, I never find out.
This is the first time Florence and I have met, but she greets me with a huge smile anyway, and even a kind word about my outfit. We settle down at a table and chairs in the corner of the room, where French doors have been thrown open to reveal a sweet little back garden. Having nearly been swept off the stairs while trying to board a plane in Dublin earlier, I can’t help but marvel at what a beautiful day it is.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been to Ireland when it wasn’t freezing!” Welch observes, through booming, drawn out giggles. “I’ve been to Ireland quite a lot, and it’s always been really cold!”
For now, at least, I can properly hear the output of Florence’s much-celebrated lungs. After this, she goes back to utterings so low and gentle, I have to strain my ears to hear her.
“I like Ireland, though,” she continues. “And I love Dublin! It’s almost like coming home, back to my Celtic roots.”
Flo is looking smart in a pair of high-waisted brown flares, a cream blouse and a patterned waistcoat. Crowning her conspicuous red hair is a floppy felt hat, complete with jaunty feather. On stage, we’re accustomed to seeing Welch in some swirling chiffon number, but today she is every inch the ‘70s style icon, just more Annie Hall than Farrah Fawcett. A tiny bird cage, the ultimate symbol of fragility, is tattooed on her finger. Keeping it company are some remarkably elaborate rings, which, while pretty to look at, will make listening back to the tape quite a chore.
Bizarely, my little MP3 exaggerates plenty of other details, too. What I remember as some gentle chirping from the garden suddenly becomes half a dozen Disney bluebirds twittering around Flo’s head and landing intermittently on her shoulder, and if I didn’t know better, I’d think Island Records had paid some young children to play blissfully and audibly in the background. It seems as though every sound in the room, from the rustling of my notebook to the brushing of a sleeve, is louder than Florence.
Of course, there’s plenty for Flo to shout about if she does decide to raise her voice later on. The world has just heard the first song from the new Florence + The Machine record, the ethereal ‘What The Water Gave Me’, and they’re smitten.
“The feedback’s actually been really overwhelming,” she beams, “because it’s not one of the big tracks. You know, in your head you know the massive ones. This is one of the more musical ones, so I thought people would hear it and be like, (adopts polite tone) ‘Oh yes. That’s nice,’ but people seemed so excited! That was a really great feeling.”
While Welch has every reason to be in high spirits today, I’m guessing she’s not exactly looking forward to spending the next five hours in the company of journalists.
“It’s okay, you know. I think the anticipation of it is worse than actually being in it. On paper this day looks completely terrifying, but once you’re in it, you’re actually fine. And it’s nice because you do get to figure out what on earth the record is about. You don’t really think about that before someone asks you questions, so in a way it’s like having therapy about the new album… endless therapy!”
Thankfully, the record in question doesn’t bear a single sign of difficult second album syndrome.
“Do you know, it was easier than I thought it was gonna be!” she laughs. “We did a lot of the writing while still on tour. Like, ‘No Light, No Light’, the intro from that was written on a tour bus in Amsterdam at four o’clock in the morning. Me and Izzy (bandmate Isabella Summers) stayed up all night and we recorded the sound of the bus whirring. Then when we got to Amsterdam we went looking for somewhere who would serve us a drink at seven in the morning. We found this sports bar, I think we drank some sort of strange drink with Midori in it? I don’t know. It was a weird day. But I think I did actually have a lot to say. When you’re on tour, you’re wrestling with so many emotions, it was quite good to come back and figure them out.”
Despite her reputation as a shrinking violet, Welch has always been a party girl. She was famously discovered in the toilet of a club, and she makes no secret of the fact that she drank her way through the early years of Florence + The Machine. In terms of swanky shindigs, 2011 has been her biggest year yet. She spent New Year’s Eve in Las Vegas with Jay-Z, Beyoncé, Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin. At New York’s Met Ball Gala in May, she sang David Bowie’s ‘Rebel Rebel’ to a room flooded with polished celebrity faces, including those belonging to Yoko Ono, Mick Jagger, Naomi Campbell, Madonna and Kanye West. Clad in an Alexander McQueen gold poppy-print gown (she earlier wore Yves Saint Laurent), she directed the “Hot tramp, I love you so” line straight at Paul McCartney, who’d been happily bopping along the whole way through her set.
If Florence is enjoying her ritzy new lifestyle, Ceremonials is certainly not letting on. If anything, the new material suggests the opposite. On current single ‘Shake It Out’, she cries “It’s hard to dance with the devil on your back”, a lyric ripe for analysis. But before I completely Freud out on the girl, she reveals that she’s not always in control of what comes out of her mouth.
“I had this band,” she begins, “we only played two shows but we would pick a chord and then try and improvise singing over it. Our friends put on music nights, so if a band dropped out we’d kind of go and make up stuff. I don’t know why we only had two gigs! But I think that’s always been part of how I learned to write songs and sing. On ‘All This And Heaven Too’ we had the music and I just sang whatever came into my head.
“It’s about just letting your brain take over, letting it go where it wants to. If you’re free with your thoughts, you can come up with loads of stuff you didn’t realise was there.”
Sounds dangerous.
“Well, I like things to be quite non-specific, not good or bad, the dark and the light, so that people can attach their own feelings and experiences to it. I don’t want anything to be too sweet or too nice. You should juxtapose the violence with the euphoria of the music. It’s kind of a constant to-ing and fro-ing between two worlds.”
It’s hardly surprising that some of history’s fiercest women turn up on Ceremonials. Does Welch identify with the character on the record?
“Yeah, definitely,” she sniffs. “There’s a real tragic heroine theme running through the album, with Virginia Woolf and Joan of Ark and Frida Kahlo. I think it’s that mix of beauty and tragedy that I’m really drawn to, something that has a kind of morbid undertone.”
She sniffs again. “Doomed romance.” If there’s a better description of the Florence + The Machine hallmark, I’ve yet to hear it.

welch penned her chart-topping first album after splitting from her teenage sweetheart, a bookish lad named Stuart who clearly left a deep impression on Florence and her songs. Three years later, the couple are back together again, Stuart Hammond is the literary editor of Dazed And Confused and Florence is the goth princess of pop. It’s probably not as perfect as it sounds (Hammond still has to deal with Flo’s heartbroken words bouncing out of the odd cab radio), but being in a steady relationship has allowed Ms. Welch to explore a brand new kind of doom.
“People have said that they felt this album was more internal, more introverted, and I think maybe I agree with that in a way. It feels like the battles are more to do with the two sides of myself, rather than to do with raging against a lover. It’s more about trying to exorcise something from within myself rather than trying to get at someone else.
“But ‘No Light, No Light’ definitely has that sense of longing and desperation that was on the Lungs album. It’s about wanting to fight your way out of helplessness, to scream your way out of helplessness, and take control of something.”
Now it’s time to talk about my favourite song on the record, a giant, simmering harp-led number called ‘Spectrum’ with a club-ready disco chorus that threatens to dethrone ‘Dog Days Are Over’ as the most triumphant Florence track yet.
“Oh, you liked it!” she beams, as if she’s never had a compliment before. “Good! I wanted something that could be played at full blast in a gay club… and I’m going to be on the bar!”
‘Spectrum’ is the track the devastated Lungs-era Florence simply couldn’t have written, a love song without ifs or buts. Bearing the idyllic refrain of “Say my name and every colour illuminates/We are shining and we’ll never be afraid again!”, it’s probably the closest Welch will ever come to a ‘Your Song’ or an ‘At Last’.
“Because I’m so drawn to dark subject matter, I wanted to make a song that was kind of open-hearted, with a hopeful message. I was a bit nervous. I was like, ‘Wow, this is really earnest and heartfelt. I’m not hiding. Where’s the dark metaphor to hide behind? AAAGH!’ but I’m really happy that we went with it. My total dream is for it to come on in a gay club and just to be dancing on the bar, surrounded by flaming shots! When that day happens, it’ll be the best day of my life.”
On the opposite side of the sunny scale is ‘Breaking Down’. Unlike ‘Spectrum’, this one passes without a modicum of optimism.
“It’s funny because we were going through a real Bowie phase,” she recalls. “We’d been listening to a lot of new Arcade Fire stuff and Bowie and that mix of the sweet with the incredibly depressing. I wanted to take those familiar feelings of depression and kind of turn them on their head and make it into a song that was quite sweet in nature, almost so you could accept them, in a way. But yes, they’re two different sides of the musical spectrum!”
Ceremonials – which has entered the UK and Irish album charts at number one – was recorded at the legendary Abbey Road studios.
“I wanted it to be special,” Welch says, “because we were making a conscious effort to do it in one place, with one producer. I wanted the band to feel like they were coming into a special place to play, and for the boys, that was a really big deal. I mean, it was a big deal for me, but for like a guy guitarist it’s the ideal.”
The producer in question is Lungs collaborator and ‘Rolling In The Deep’ man Paul Epworth, who worked on all 13 tracks on Ceremonials.
“I was happiest with the way ‘Cosmic Love’ turned out on the first record,” she tells me. “The other producers did such a good job, but that song to me really summed up how I felt about that first record, and it seemed like it would be wise to move forward with Paul.”
She’s beginning to sound like a shamed politician, but I needn’t worry, a more boisterous Florence appears when I ask the right question; Where should someone listen to Ceremonials?
“I always like listening to music on walks, on headphones,” she muses. “I think music is like no other thing. Art, you have to go somewhere specific to look at it, it exists in a physical thing, it changes your physical environment, whereas music is the only thing that can change the environment around you without touching in any physical way, it’s all mental. I hope people listen to it while walking or on car journeys, so the music is kind of going on this journey with you.
“My album is an album for running down hills fast to!” she erupts. “My album is an album for soundtracking medieval battles!”
Shame there aren’t too many of them around...
“I will find one! With my boombox. Like, ‘It’s okay, guys, I’m here! You can start!’”
Here’s another thing Flo isn’t shy about, gushing over her idols. In the past, she’s namechecked Kate Bush, Tori Amos, Stevie Nicks, Janis Joplin, Grace Slick, Shirley Manson and even Gwen Stefani as inspirations, is there one female performer who she feels an extra special connection to?
“Patti Smith,” she nods. “Definitely her energy and her attitude.”
It’s a good choice. Not only does Florence bear a striking resemblance to Horses-era Smith, she also shares her tenacious live presence and unyielding modesty.
“I’ve seen interviews with her on YouTube and Patti just seems so gentle,” she beams. “I collect pictures of her and she’s so beautiful. That sort of dreamy, outsider visceral nature, I like. I love her.”
Have they met? Flo shakes her head. Good. It’s always better when your role model is just that little bit out of reach.
“Yeah. You can still keep the fantasy.”
Has Florence considered that she herself might be a role model for other women?
“I do find it quite overwhelming if I meet girls and they seem to be really shaking and in tears. I’m like, ‘It’s just me! Don’t be scared, I’m just like you! I fall over and spill things on myself. I’m completely useless! Don’t cry!’ You do feel a certain sense of responsibility to them and it’s so sweet, but you’d never wake up in the morning and think, ‘Oh, I’m going to be a role model today.’ I can’t really think like that, it’d be too nerve-wracking, I wouldn’t be able to step outside the house for fear of letting people down.”
This is the difference between Welch and an artist like Lady Gaga, who appears to feed off her function as role model like a tick feeds off your pet Labrador.
“It must be so exhausting,” Welch agrees. “It’s very admirable for her to immerse herself completely in her own construction and stick to it with such conviction, but I think, for me, it’s a more subtle bleeding of reality and performance. I guess I do it in a way that is more livable for me. She does it in a way that she lives and breathes it and I do too, but I’m drawn to the more romantic side than the dramatic.”
Still, the two women have more in common than Florence may realise. To my eyes at least, their live shows carry the same ferocious energy and fearless sex appeal.
“I think I would be so loath to look intentionally sexy!” Florence giggles. “It kind of makes me feel weird. I’m just trying to frighten people! It’s just trying to own it and own your own body and own the song and just to be free, I think, but to just be overtly sexy that’s never been what I’m about.”
We’ll leave the heavy petting and phallic props to Rihanna, then.
“Yeah. God, she’s amazing!”
Still, even chart dominatrix Rihanna doesn’t have designers lining up to dress her. Other fashion accolades Welch has racked up in the last few weeks include a place on the British Fashion Council Style Icon List and a number two spot on Harper’s Bazaar Best Dressed List. And then there’s that enviable relationship with Chanel. A couture-draped Flo performed on the Chanel runway at Paris Fashion Week this year, and Karl Lagerfeld himself photographed her for the cover of Japanese Vogue, styling her in his own iconic likeness.
“That was amazing to do!” she says. “I jumped at the chance to put a suit on and show my forehead! I did the whole shoot in Karl’s photo booth, a photo booth from the new Chanel campaigns that he keeps in his studio. He took the cover shoot and then he was like, ‘Okay, go on. Put on the outfit and go and pose in the photo booth!’ So I basically took them all myself!
“But that beautiful Ralph Loren Chinese jacket…” she trails, possibly using the next few seconds to mentally slip back into the thing. “It’s quite a powerful thing being in a suit, it was exciting.”
Not too shabby for a girl who bases her personal style on her old English teacher. Does Florence welcome all this attention from the fashion world?
“Fashion is just an escape, isn’t it?” she hums. “I’m so integrally emotionally tied to music, emotionally and physically. I’m a singer, I have to use my whole body! Fashion is nice because it’s not about the internal struggle, it’s the outside. It’s not raging war against my psyche. It’s a nice dress! So it’s a real relief. I love clothes and I love going to fashion shows and it’s all kind of part of the performance. What you wear really dictates how you move on stage and I think as the music’s evolved, the outfits have kind of evolved with it.
“But it’s been a gradual process. My first shows, I just wore pop socks, T-shirts, anything that I turned up in, I’d probably been out for three days and rolled up in someone else’s shoes. I think gradually I’ve become more interested in it and more aware of how things move on stage, but yeah, it’s very, very flattering.”
Things took yet another bizarre turn in February when Welch was asked to appear in an Aretha Franklin tribute at the Grammys alongside Christina Aguilera, Jennifer Hudson and a host of other Stateside warblers. This, in case you hadn’t already guessed, is a very big deal. The show’s executive producer Ken Ehrlich hit the nail right on its proverbial noggin, saying, “When you do a tribute to Aretha Franklin, you’d better get singers, because number one, she’s watching, and number two, you just want to make it right.”
“It was so frightening,” Welch recalls. “It was like the most frightening moment of my life.”
And these things always look like so much fun on the telly...
“That’s why I said yes to everything!” she laughs. “I was like, ‘Aw yeah! When on earth will I get the opportunity to go to the Oscars again? Probably never!’ I’ve always had a bit of a, ‘Oh cool, that’ll be fun’ attitude and then when I’m there, I’m like (shifts her voice to a desperate, whispered scream) ‘What am I doing? This is terrifying! I can’t back out now! Oh My God!’
“The Grammys was really frightening, though, because I was up there with so many strong, strong, amazing singers and it was going in a row and we all had to sing one after the other and I was like, ‘It’s going to be my turn soon… it’s coming…. OHI’MSINGING…. AAAAGH’ and I’m next to Jennifer Hudson who’s got such pipes on her and I felt so out of place. It was really amazing to be asked but I did feel very unqualified.”
Actually, I thought it was rather nice to hear a human-sounding voice for once, as well as all those extraterrestrial divas.
“I don’t know,” Welch mumbles. “I felt very out of my depth I must say, I was shaking. But it was so cool though, because LL Cool J said my name! That was awesome!”
My time’s nearly up and there’s just one party left to talk about; Flo’s 25th birthday soirée a few weeks back.
“We had it in a house where they filmed The King’s Speech and it was a flappers and philosophers theme! Everyone dressed up so well! I started the night in a beautiful ‘20s liquid gold gown and I ended it in a ripped clown suit covered in cake!”
If Flo really does have multiple personalities, this is as good a metaphor as any. As well as being mouse-level timid, she can also be flashy, brazen and quite mad. It would be cynical of me to assume that her contrasting quirks are all part of the act, but clearly, this is a woman who understands the enormous power of vulnerability, pushing her instantly ahead of countless other pop stars I could mention. To borrow a line from Truman Capote, “She is a phony, but… she’s a real phony.”
As a grinning Florence hugs me goodbye, I notice the bird cage tattoo again. This time, it clicks, it’s on her middle finger. Later, I will tell inquirers that she is a woman not to be underestimated.

Ceremonials is out now on Island Records.