Florence + The Machine electrifies the BBC Proms with the full power of her ‘Lungs’
The headline set magnificently re-imagines debut album Lungs with the Jules Buckley Orchestra fifteen years after it introduced the artist to the world.
The atmosphere at the Royal Albert Hall is fizzing with excitement. Next to me is a woman that has travelled from Hackney with her eight-year-old daughter, who wears a lace dress, dark lipstick and a garland of flowers in her hair. There are dozens of similarly dressed women dotted throughout the auditorium, eagerly anticipating the arrival of Florence Welch, who tonight performs one of the closing highlights of the world’s most famous classical music festival, the BBC Proms.
As the lights dim, fifteen backing singers line the stage from end to end, before Florence glides on in a majestic blood red Rodarte gown to a wave of applause. A silence falls around us as her famous Machine allows the opening bars of ‘Drumming Song’ to rise and fill the Royal Albert Hall.
Having seen Florence perform at venues like Brixton Academy, Glastonbury and the O2, it’s here that her vocals ring out in their arresting best. From the gentlest inflection to the grandest crescendo, every vocal is crisp, her clarity astounding. Welch’s voice has matured well over the last fifteen years and she tackles the soaring notes of ‘You Got The Love’ with ease, seemingly impressing even herself despite commenting how she had originally sang these songs “thinking she’d only sing them once”.
From Stormzy to Shirley Bassey, Welch follows a long tradition of bringing the finest British pop stars to the classical festival, all performing their own material to a full orchestra.
Never one to simply deliver the expected, for her Proms debut Welch worked with conductor Jules Buckley and his Orchestra – joined by some of the musicians that performed on the original recordings – to re-imagine Lungs, her 3million selling debut album. Commemorating fifteen years since its release, Welch is deservedly proud of the end result and its beguiling new interpretation. “This was an album created with so much feeling,” she tells the crowd in soft whisper-like tones. “I never thought anyone could add more feeling to it.”
The singer-songwriter’s first ever single ‘Kiss with a Fist’ receives a barn-storming folk reworking with a violin solo that feels possessed by the most insane demon, while a storming ‘Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up)’ has everyone in the grand hall up on their feet with arms flailing wildly in the air from its opening beat. With high drama and delicate flow in equal parts, Welch commands the stage through deeper album cuts – the rolling rhythms of ‘Blinding’ and the twinkling sway of ‘Hurricane Drunk’ are exceptional – through to uproarious hits like ‘Dog Days Are Over’.
As you’d expect from an artist that carved a niche for herself so defined that many have attempted to emulate but few have successfully followed, Florence Welch and her Machine boldly underscores the impact she has made on popular music with bewildering magic.