Florence & the Machine

Florence And Her Strange Charm

Florence and the Machine's debut album Lungs was one of the most successful in Europe last year. Released in July, it went triple-platinum in the U.K. and won the BRIT Award for Best Album too. Less than a year later, the flame-haired brains behind the band, Florence Welch, is ready to make a bid for further success with her sophomore effort. It sounds like she needs to: in an interview with the BBC in January she said “life hasn't changed. I still get the bus. I have no cash cards so I'm pretty much broke and borrowing money still. My phone's broken; I'm still exactly the same." Inspiration for the new album comes from unexpected sources; in an interview with Australian e-zine The Vine, she revealed a forthcoming scientific theme. “Well, the first song is quite visceral, about blood and teeth, ribs, body parts, lungs... I’ve written a song about ‘strangeness and charm’ [which are] the smallest atoms... And then I wrote another song called 'Spectrum', so it seems to me it’s more chemical, it’s more science-based.” Tom Lehrer may have been beaten Florence to the post when it comes to making science lyrical with his musical version of the periodic table, "The Elements," but there’s a huge appetite for her new release. She won’t be broke for much longer.