{"id":41595,"date":"2009-07-15T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2009-07-15T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/lungs\/"},"modified":"2009-07-15T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2009-07-15T00:00:00","slug":"lungs","status":"publish","type":"review","link":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/lungs\/","title":{"rendered":"Lungs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Along with the mass majority, my first encounter with Flo And The Machine was through their single \u201cKiss With A Fist,\u201d released in June of last year. \u201cKiss With A Fist,\u201d a tantalizing two-minute track that intimates the bare brass of Joan Jett, garnered some raised eyebrows, but obviously not enough to pilfer limelight from Katy Perry\u2019s equally feisty and subtle as a slap debut \u201cI Kissed A Girl.\u201d<\/o:p><\/p>\n

\u201cKiss With A Fist\u201d is embedded somewhere in the stylings of Lily Allen and Ida Maria, which made it seem as though Florence And The Machine were destined to be just yet another playful tongue-in-cheek indie pop outfit to be squeezed into an already fairly populated clown car. It was right around about the time I heard \u201cCosmic Love,\u201d another single mapped out for their as-yet-to-be-released debut Lungs,<\/i> that I found myself eating my words. Pretty damn humbly.<\/o:p><\/p>\n

\u201cCosmic Love\u201d is a fantastical song that seems like it would only be justified playing at max volume on top of a skyscraper. It makes the room around you suddenly seem claustrophobic, crawls under your skin, settles there, and makes you itch from the inside out. <\/o:p><\/p>\n

The album itself stretches so far from the style of Flo\u2019s debut single that it\u2019s hard to conceive both \u201cKiss\u201d and Lungs<\/i> originated from the same source. The vocals mature from catty pop-punk into something heraldingly soulful. Barren musical arrangement is morphed into complex and stellar arrangements of keyboards, fluttered harps, guitar and drums. On the whole, it comes across like a series of seraphic lullabies that seem to fit perfectly to Florence Welch\u2019s nymph-like stage performances.<\/o:p><\/p>\n

The album\u2019s opening track, \u201cDog Days Are Over,\u201d managed to gather the band a bit of a following, something pretty much guaranteed once featured in a musical geyser like E4\u2019s drama Skins.<\/i> The track proves the perfect introduction to Lungs<\/i> by merging a euphoric, almost gospel sound with melancholic lyrics like \u201cI never wanted anything from you \/ Except everything you had \/ And what was left after that too \/ Happiness it hurt like a bullet in the mind \/ Struck from a great height by someone who should know better than that.\u201d<\/o:p><\/p>\n

On first listen, some tracks on Lungs<\/i> may be hard to distinguish from each other as Florence Welch almost relentlessly delivers one crescendo performance after another. \u201cRabbit Heart (Raise It Up)\u201d and \u201cHowl\u201d both taste of \u201880s pop influence and may bring about initial thoughts of Kate Bush, but these are quickly silenced by the chase of the chorus. \u00a0For balance, songs like \u201cMy Boy Builds Coffins\u201d and the \u201cGirl With One Eye\u201d help generate diversity ensuring that Lungs <\/i>isn\u2019t purely a showcase of vocal talent, although, in honesty, this characteristic does tend to dominate. <\/o:p><\/p>\n

Closing off the album is \u201cBlinding,\u201d a track fringed with elements of The Cure combined with adrenaline drumbeats that offers you a mellow exit from the \u201cdreaming state\u201d constructed by Florence And The Machine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":72,"featured_media":29971,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[8429],"rating":[5613],"class_list":["post-41595","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-florence-the-machine","rating-rating-a-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41595","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/72"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41595"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41595\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29971"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=41595"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=41595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}