All the songs in question: NPR

Welch's latest album, How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful explores the consequences of a breakup, and in particular the painful emptiness and desire that accompanied it. Over the course of her career, she has developed a reputation for capturing vivid and self-destructive emotions barely contained in her baroque sound. Who can forget the fragile glittering harps of "cosmic love", with this mesmerizing allegory amidst its resounding echoes: "You've left me in the dark"? Or the galloping chorus of "Dog Days Are Over", an ostensibly joyous song whose morbid description of happiness involves being hit by a train coming in the opposite direction? Defined by his rising vocals and dark, furious energy, Welch seemed to worship a religion before God forgave – his loud and thunderous music, chased forever by demons and ghouls

High As Hope preserves the great , torrential Florence. melodrama, but it feels less like a storm than the soft light that bursts forth, amid the sober fear of a new day. Many songs start off uninhibited, supported by Welch's grand, resonant voice and minimal support. "No Choir", the closing song, opens on an austere a cappella section: its loneliness offers a source of power, a confidence in its ability to express itself. Her previous albums were dipped in figurative language, elaborate creations that protected her from reality, but in High As Hope she clearly says what she means. "I'm sorry to have spoiled your birthday," she apologizes in "Grace," a loving homage to her sister. The album celebrates the intimate and banal: his carefree education in South London, his nostalgic adoration of Patti Smith, the impassive novel of two people doing nothing. Her songs are imprinted with a tender optimism: "My heart bends and breaks so many times," she sings in "100 Days". "And reborn at every sunrise."

High As Hope also expresses the desire to capture feelings greater than herself, inspired by the collective moments she witnessed in New York during the summer of 2016. The track opening "June", recalls "these hardest days" "when love has become an act of defiance", before embarking on a call for solidarity. "Stand with each other," she repeats with almost maternal desire. "Stand with each other." It is a novel for an artist whose personality is often centered on irreconcilable ideas of breakup and isolation.

But for those who cherish the Florence of yesteryear, with all its grandeur and chiaroscuro, there is still a glimmer of its old. The video of "Big God", a song about waiting for someone to text, shows a synchronized group of women writhing on a soaked floor, performing strange dance moves twice as disconcerting that the words "read at 20:42" below text sent. The veiled dancers levitate like heads of disembodied cherubs in a painting of the Renaissance. "You'll always be my favorite ghost," Florence moaned, lingering on the last word

But for the most part, she seems to have ended up with a sinister theatrical and inconsolable moods. In "Patricia", the singer strikes a novel feeling about her previous albums: "It's such a wonderful thing to love."