Florence + The Machine How Big How Blue How Beautiful (2 Lp's) 08/26/2022

Florence + The Machine How Big How Blue How Beautiful (2 Lp's) 08/26/2022The much anticipated third studio long player from Florence Welch and her mechanically inclined companions, How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful arrives after a period of recalibration for the spirited English songtress. Arriving three and a half years after 2011's well received Ceremonials, the 11 track set, the first Florence + the Machine album to be produced by Markus Dravs (Arcade Fire, Coldplay), eschews some of the bombast and water and death

Photographer: The Gaslight Anthem

Armstrong makes it impossible to miss the meaning of the anti-mass shooting "Bang Bang" or the self-explanatory "Troubled Times" -- but this concentration on individual songs also shifts the focus back to how the band really can craft dynamic rock songs

The underdog angle is exploited for maximum effect and it's so genuinely endearing that listeners will be rooting for her -- if they don't already -- by the last line of the empowering

but still in the same pointedly discombobulated spirit as the rockers

It's fascinating when Em admits "Hatred was flowin' through my veins

partly because it was kept short to leave room for enhanced CD content

André 3000

8One Time 4 Your Mind

Released: 08/19/2008

" while the tinkling piano and strings on "Crown of Love" conjure up a heartbroken surfside prom

On only their second outing Oxford's Radiohead fulfilled their huge potential

synthesizer