You probably won’t realise quite how much you missed Florence Welch’s voice until you get stuck in to Sky Full Of Song, the song she just shared with the Internet, reported to be the first from a forthcoming follow-up to Florence + The Machine’s 2015 album How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful.
Despite such a wordy title, and such a big-lunged singer, the song is surprisingly minimal, with things kept to just her voice and a live orchestral accompaniment. What it lacks in sonic girth it makes up with emotion, with lyrics like, “I thought I was flying but maybe I’m dying tonight” over and over again. The accompanying A.G Rojas-directed video, shot in black and white, sees Florence hang about a gallery space.
“This was a song that just fell out of the sky fully formed,” Florence has said of Sky Full Of Song. “Sometimes when you are performing you get so high, it’s hard to know how to come down. There is this feeling of being cracked open, rushing endlessly outwards and upwards, and wanting somebody to hold you still, bring you back to yourself. It’s an incredible, celestial, but somehow lonely feeling.”
It will be released on limited edition 7” for Record Store Day on 21 April. The B-side, we’re told, is Florence reading a poem called New York poem (for Polly). Lovely.