Florence And The Machine

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Florence Welch, the pop star, is a bit divisive. She seems to divide. Although maybe it's just that the opinions that resonate are the ones which pick an extreme point on that thin line between love and hate and then VERY LOUDLY repeat what they're saying.

Those are the ones that shift papers, that cause ructions, that you remember. It's a modern phenomenon: either you're amazing or you're bilge. So. Love her or hate her. Love her or hate her. L.O.V.E or H.A.T.E. Really? Those are the only options?

It is a strangely polarised response when you think that her first album, Lungs, wasn't black or white. It was a bit, well, grey. It was OK, in parts, but it lacked a certain cohesion.

But it made Florence a big deal. Which subsequently makes this, billed as both her only remaining British show of 2011 and the launch night for the new album Ceremonials, a big deal.

For a relatively small audience mainly drawn from the non-critical, doting camp, there was no choice. The cries of “We love you Florence!” rang out from the moment the velvet curtain dramatically rose to reveal our fair maiden, dressed coquettishly in a brown satin number that could easily have passed for Obi-Wan Kenobi's dressing gown.

To be fair, it was a pretty fine entrance. Definitely far more charismatic than the usual ploy of shuffling on, plugging things in and fiddling with knobs on amplifiers for a couple of minutes before pointing at the roadie unhappily.

Following the grand entrance, the new material soared. For whatever reason, perhaps just the sheer ubiquity of the songs from Lungs, the tracks taken from Ceremonials sounded more rounded, more complete, more enjoyable.

More epic, too; an initial trio of Only If For A Night, What The Water Gave Me and Heartlines were post-rock chamber pop. Grand, orchestral, but composed and tightly reined in. Full of tribal tombs and flittering sparkles of harp, they sound ageless. Windswept. Literate. Poignant. There's something about them that imparts a feeling of weight and substance.

During that opening spell, Florence said nothing. She just smiled knowingly, pirouetted demurely, and waved her hands like she was conducting an orchestra. There was a control to all that she did. That voice didn't bellow; it was, like the rest of her performance, stately, elegant and controlled.

Then at the end of the last of the three songs, she turned and walked straight into her microphone stand, thus perfectly encapsulating the intriguing paradox of Florence Welch; a siren singing sophisticated torch songs of longing and romance who dances like no one's looking, and who seems genuinely and completely taken aback when confronted with waves of rapture directed towards her.

Our sirens are supposed to be standoffish and poised, not prone to giddily spinning around so many times they run the risk of turning the auditorium into a vomitorium. It is fascinating. Plus, the signs are that Ceremonials could be an album as fascinating as she is. Shake It Out is a fantastic, fist-pumping gothic hymn, while No Light No Light starkly pulses to a danceable, yet eerie beat.

All of which suggests Florence is gong to go into 2012 being no less divisive and even more interesting. We'll definitely take that.

Florence And The Machine played: Only If For A Night, What The Water Gave Me, Heartlines, Cosmic Love, Lover to Lover, Leave My Body, Dog Days Are Over, Shake It Out, Rabbit Heart(Raise It Up), Spectrum, Never Let Me Go (w/Kid Harpoon), No Light No Light