U.K. band Florence + the Machine returned today with their fifth studio album, Dance Fever. The LP arrived alongside a special double vinyl edition that you can pick up on Amazon now. In the lead-up to the release, fans received a good taste of what to expect on the record through four promotional singles: “Free,” “My Love,” “King,” and “Heaven Is Here.”
Produced by Florence + the Machine mastermind Florence Welch, Jack Antanoff, and Glass Animals’ Dave Bayley, Dance Fever was recorded mostly in London during the COVID-19 pandemic. Welch says the LP’s heavier rock sound was partly a reaction to her last release, 2018’s High As Hope. “I was a little sick of my own shit, which is heavy piano,” Welch told The New York Times. “I missed guitars.”
Lyrically, Welch touches on everything from her desire to “purge” after the pandemic to her anxiety and the societal pressure on women to have kids. “How I make sense of the world is to turn it into myth and fable,” she told Rolling Stone. “Turning people and things into characters… I think that’s how I process everything.”