Ceremonials

I've always loved the style, so I bought Florence + the Machine's Ceremonials album a couple of weeks ago. It's been pretty much all I've listened to. I love it.

Florence is INCREDIBLY talented, vocally. I saw her perform live on New Year's Eve, and she sounded exactly the same as she does recorded. There is no auto-tune involved with her voice. For any singer these days, that's praise-worthy, but once you year Florence's astounding range, you'll be even more impressed.

I also love her musical style. Her music is anything but ordinary-sounding. It's mystical, or eerie, or incongruous, but never boring. A lot of it has minor keys in it, which I love, and there's usually something unexpected, like the random trill of harp. Often you have to figure out what the song is talking about for yourself, although I think she's more literal in Ceremonials than she was in Lungs.

The songs on the album fall into six tiers of favoritism in my mind.

Tier #1: "Seven Devils." I love this song. The beat gets inside of me and makes me want to move, dance. It's deeply minor-sounding, eerie, unusual. I just love it.

Tier #2: "No Light, No Light" and "Only if For a Night." I love these songs about equally, although it took a while for "Only" to make it up this high on the list. It gets in my head and I love the lyrics and sound. I also love the sound of "No Light," plus it's catchy and reminds me of Will Herondale from the Infernal Devices trilogy :3 Probably because it mentions bright blue eyes.

Tier #3: "Heartlines" and "What the Water Gave Me." I like "Heartlines" because it has some beautiful notes and harmonies, and it makes me think. "What the Water" I like mostly for the sound. Neither are absolute favorites, hence being on tier 3.

Tier #4: "Spectrum," "Leave My Body." Both are interesting-sounding songs that I probably should listen to more often, but the other three tiers just steal my ears XD Both these songs are catchy and typical-Florence interesting.

Tier #5: "Breaking Down," "Never Let Me Go," and "Shake It Out." They're okay. For some reason they just don't stick with me. If they come on my iPod, I'm always like "eh, nah" and skip it, because there are so much better songs on the album. "Shake" is actually the most popular song, the one most people will know. But I almost don't like it.

Tier #6: "Lover to Lover," and "All This and Heaven Too." These last two songs actually sort of annoy me. I don't enjoy them. You might have a different impression though.

Alright, well, here's "Seven Devils," my favorite song from the album. You should definitely check it out if you enjoy unusual, but still catchy, music.

~Stephanie