Culture Crash: The New Florence + the Machine Album

Have you listened to Florence + the Machine’s latest album, Dance Fever? I think it’s a staggering achievement. Let’s get into it.

Florence + the Machine burst onto the scene in 2009 and 2010 thanks to the strength of their album “Lungs” and its breakout single “Dog Days are Over.” Over the years, the band has released more, often wonderful, albums, toured and gone on the festival circuit, but their latest effort, “Dance Fever” is my favorite complete album of theirs ever.

The album was largely produced by Florence Welch, the “Florence” in Florence + the Machine, along with collaborators Jack Antonoff of Bleachers and Dave Bayley of Glass Animals. Infusing Welch’s soaring vocals with the maximalist indie pop rock sensibilities of Antonoff and Bayley works like magic. The song “Daffodil” builds and builds before climaxing with a cinematic crescendo, and that’s just one of many standout moments in the album’s 47-minute runtime.

Beyond just the incredible production, though, “Dance Fever” is full of some of Welch’s best lyrics. Written in part during the COVID-19 pandemic, Welch examines so much of what the rest of us were also musing throughout 2020 and 2021: What she wants out of her life, out of her career, and what it means to be alive in the present day. She longs for the return of normalcy, and what is more relatable than that?

Full of dance beats, introspective lyrics, and the expected pitch-perfect vocal performance from Welch, Dance Fever truly is one of the great albums of 2022.

Dance Fever is available now.