FLORENCE + THE MACHINE
"High as Hope"
BOTTOM LINE: Revealing her vulnerabilities to grow even stronger.
Florence Welch doesn't wait to speak her truth on the new Florence + the Machine album "High as Hope" (Republic).
"The show was ending and I had started to crack," she sings to open the album with "June." "Woke up in Chicago and the sky turned black ... . I'm so high I can see an angel."
She follows that with an even more direct admission. "At 17, I started to starve myself," she reveals in the first single "Hunger." "I thought that love was a kind of emptiness."
They are startling admissions from one of rock's strongest women _ that she struggled with an eating disorder and with drinking too much to deal with her sudden stardom following the band's 2009 debut "Lungs" and the hits "Dog Days Are Over" and "You've Got the Love."
But the effect of the revelations is even more powerful. By making "Hunger" a catchy, universal anthem _ "We all have a hunger," she chants _ Welch doesn't just show that it's a struggle that can be overcome but that everyone has their own struggles.
Throughout "High as Hope," Florence + the Machine quietly gather strength as they move forward, with the help of Emile Haynie, who co-produced the album with Welch. They strip away extraneous flourishes and simply focus on delivering honest messages and musical beauty, reaching a stunning summit with the final three songs. In "100 Years," Welch describes protests in steadfast, resolute terms. ("Try and fill us with your hate and we will shine a light and the days will become endless and never and never turn to night," she promises.) In "The End of Love," she creates a choir of Florences to capture the beauty that exists even in the end of a relationship. By pairing that with "No Choir," a gorgeous, stripped-down celebration of "two people sitting doing nothing," it becomes clear she has learned that being content can be beautiful, that we should all have high hopes for that.
GORILLAZ
"The Now Now"
BOTTOM LINE: The cartoon band gets more serious and focused.
It's hard to imagine how (or why) a cartoon band would scale back. But that's what the Gorillaz have done for their new album, "The Now Now" (Warner Bros.), following hot on the heels of last year's "Humanz."
Instead of the collaborator-stuffed "Humanz," there are only three guests on "The Now Now" _ George Benson, who contributes the smooth jazz guitar on "Humility," and house music artist Jamie Principle and Snoop Dogg on the groove-driven "Hollywood." That leaves the bulk of the album in the hands of 2D (aka Damon Albarn), who sounds more downtrodden and contemplative than usual. "I'm not going to cry," he declares in the dreamy "Kansas," even though he doesn't seem entirely convinced.
On "Magic City," he adopts latter-day David Bowie gravitas in his delivery, though there is uncertainty here too, as he wonders, "You've got me lost in Magic City. You've got me questioning it all."
"The Now Now" is a far more muted affair compared to previous Gorillaz Technicolor extravaganzas. But it is still as well-crafted as ever, with funky breaks such as "Lake Zurich" balancing the stately synth pop of "One Percent."
