Born on August 28: Florence Welch, a complex, disturbing and slightly anxious machine
Born in 1986 in the London Camberwell borough, many think of her as a distant cousin of Kate Bush.
It would be wrong to believe that success entirely negates serendipity. In an epic and even grandiloquent repertoire, and in bits and pieces, Florence Welch reveals a life as battered as most of ours. This is also partly what makes her touching. With her fourth album "High As Hope" in 2018, this "ball of anxiety" (as she sometimes describes herself) no longer hesitates to bring about her own anxieties, to look into the future of our planet and to even question her own aging.
Two years ago, when "Dance Fever" was released, Florence told Rolling Stone magazine: "My way of making sense of the world is to turn it into myth and fable. Turning people and things into characters... That's how I deal with everything." She's of course aware that the fantasy image her audience perceives of her as is, in the same vein, far removed from her own daily reality. Indeed, when you see her twirling around on stage, it's hard to imagine that she considers herself agoraphobic. Formerly diagnosed as dyslexic, the English singer has always maintained and nurtured a passion for words, myths and literature. Not one for the easy way out, she loves nothing less than to elevate the subject. hence her latest album "Dance Fever" that makes no reference to the Bee Gees or any kind of Saturday Night Fever. Quite the contrary, even if it is not the only common thread, the album refers to a mysterious epidemic of dancing in the Middle Ages (which was also called the "dancing plague"). In 1374, in several dozen medieval cities spread along the Rhine, hundreds of people were seized by irrepressible dancing convulsions, not even stopping to drink or eat. Let alone rest. No serious scientific explanation has ever made it possible to understand this phenomenon, which reoccured in other places in Europe. Except that it was undoubtedly an outlet for the anxieties of the time. This is good because Florence sees dance as a "liberating ritual"...
(MH with AK - Photo: Etienne Tordoir)
Photo: Florence Welch (Florence + The Machine) at the TW Classic Festival in Werchter (Belgium) on June 25, 2022 (© Etienne Tordoir)
