Who’s afraid of Florence Welch?
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[6.67]
Brad Shoup: What is given, it seems, is a premodern dread. Just in time for hurricane season, Welch takes us slouching toward the evil sea, rocks in our pockets. While she’s gone on record regarding the theme of parents trying to save their drowning children, in referencing Virginia Woolf, she’s inserted a whole other agency in the song; nature is now as dangerous as what we do with it. Message aside, the song’s less epic than it is eventful, the largest of which being the moment Welch sheds a controlled delivery (and the clockwork backbeat) and leads the choir in an old-fashioned rock’n’roll suicide.
[8]
Frank Kogan: I tell myself that I consider her voice too heavy and posh to be any good for dance or pop or rock, yet by the end of every year a track of hers is always inexplicably climbing my singles list. This one’s not even waiting for year’s-end: heavy topic (suicide), sophomoric pseudo-poetry (cruel mistresses, rust on shields), as Florence shoots anvils into the upper atmosphere, and I’m thrilled.
[8]
Katherine St Asaph: Thank God for “Rolling in the Deep”; without it, the music industry would still be doing the equivalent of clapping Florence Welch between the scapulae until she’s loud enough to be the world’s designated non-R&B belter with album-immortalized lungs. The wretched Aretha Franklin tribute at the Grammys showed how well that worked, but it was justified; freed from having to oversing, Florence can focus on the gothic-pastoral ballads that were already the best part of Lungs. In Florence-only terms, “What the Water Gave Me” is simple; it’s “Rabbit Heart” raised to the scale of a “Drumming Song,” feelings swelling at the slightest movement. Florence still knows and uses modern idioms — the intro is “Tainted Love” slower, and around 3:00 the guitar-and-drum chug begs to lead into Nina Persson singing “it’s been a long, slow collision...” But her heart lies backward; she evokes the sea-blown pirouettes from Katy Carr’s “Army,” melancholy and many words from Happy Rhodes’ “Lay Me Down” and the harps and yearning of Loreena McKennitt’s most wistful work. She does get to belt, but the tides of the arrangement have roared to the front by then, submerging. Nobody but tiny bands confined to mailing lists has made music like this in years, and when Florence’s album arrived, I’m convinced we’ll find our inner lives were poorer for it.
[10]
Ian Mathers: Up until the climax, which is actually quite good, this is a song that goes quiet at exactly the wrong times. The first album’s strengths did not involve subtlety or nuance, and once “What the Water Gave Me” fully kicks in, it’s a good reminder of why the weak half of Lungs was worth putting up with. It’s too long, and it’s takes too much time to get to the good bit (and then too long to die off again), but in as much as “What the Water Gave Me” suggests the new album is going to be more “Drumming Song” and less (ugh) “Kiss With a Fist,” it’s a good sign.
[6]
Iain Mew: I like all of the early bits of this that have some space to them, and the lyrics are pretty evocative even if they are fairly rote Florence mythological imagery (apart from when she clearly sings “pockets full of snot” at the 0:55 mark). Eventually though it builds up to everything that I didn’t like about her last time round, becoming an overcrowded mess with her painfully yelping over it repeatedly.
[4]
Jer Fairall: Builds to a fairly awesome climax in its final minute, but by that point feels compensatory for what a chore the first four are to get through. She still lacks the gravitas to pull off anything like Tori Amos’s confessional intensity or Bat For Lashes’ ethereal drama, some combination of which she seems to be aiming for here, until that finale reminds us, as “Dog Days Are Over” did for its entire running time, that she’s at her best fronting a kick ass rock song rather than wading in the murky pools of whatever this is.
[4]
Edward Okulicz: I’m not sure, I thought this was exactly what I wanted to hear from Florence’s second album — vocal heavings amidst emotional upheaving and dark, dark darkness — but it feels like too much of a good thing about nothing in particular. Her voice is still wondrous and the production is still sumptuous, so it’s by no means bad… perhaps too little of a surprise?
[7]
Jonathan Bradley: This is the first time I’ve heard Florence rely so heavily on the machine; that is, this is a model product that sounds so fresh off the group’s assembly line I might as well have had to remove shrink wrap before listening. It leans more heavily on atmosphere and less on a big wailed chorus than usual, but mostly it just sounds like all those other Florence Welch singles I’ve found unexpectedly satisfying.
[6]
Alfred Soto: Earlier this year, PJ Harvey released a concept album revolving around Great War tropes — an album-length exploration of “Down By the Water” if you think about it. Abstruse and a mite precious, it’s a half success. Florence, employing a procrustean wall of sound to delineate the kind of immersion that encompasses self-immolation and baptism, shouts and soars with such force that if you don’t feel the weight of the stones in her pocket you’ll at least feel the mud between her toes as she wades into the water.
[7]