Florence + The Machine — Lungs

There’s plenty of stuff in my iTunes collection from my kids’ teen years that I hadn’t the slightest interest in, and there are huge swaths of my creaky old collection you couldn’t pay them to listen to. But there are two artists I can think of that we all discovered together and enjoyed together. The first was The Faces, to whom I hadn’t given much attention in my own teen years, but whom I suddenly rediscovered when my kids were in middle and high school. The second, at about the same time period, was Florence + The Machine.

There aren’t a lot of artists for whom I can remember the first time I heard them, but Florence + The Machine, I absolutely remember: it was their debut performance on Saturday Night Live. That means it was 2010. It isn’t likely that I was actually watching the show live, but back then I was watching it fairly regularly, and I would frequently check out the musical guests, even if they weren’t to my liking, just to see what was new.

Well, Florence came on, and opened with “Dog Days Are Over,” and I’m telling you, I was mesmerized. Here was a tremendous pop-rock band, playing this intricate, different music, live, with a harp. It seemed incredible. The second song was “You Got The Love,” which sealed the deal. I was an instant Florence fan. (It turns out “Lungs” had already been out for a year then, but how would I know? I’m generally just not aware of the latest thing.)

I got “Lungs” digitally and played it endlessly, but that wasn’t a time of much buying for me, so I didn’t even have the CD, let alone vinyl (if it was released that way in the first place). But even as my listening has shifted almost entirely to vinyl, supplemented by a few minutes of YouTube videos at night, I have continued to listen to Florence, so I was thrilled to find this and the next couple of albums I’ll mention at Forever Changes earlier this year (May 2022).

Well, it’s fantastic to listen to again. Just as immediate, as striking, as passionate as ever. Florence somehow uses orchestral instruments as an integral part of her compositions, not just as accents or color, and seeing a harp onstage, upstage, in a live performance was really a departure. Love this album!