It’s the album that brings back the very best of Florence – the festival headlining Bou dicca, wielding anthems like a flaming sword. Pitchfork may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers.

Dance Fever vinyl from Spotify top Florence + The [EXCLUSIVE] Dance Fever vinyl from Spotify top Florence + The

In early 2022, Florence and the Machine were confirmed to be headlining a series of summer music festivals, including the Madrid's Mad Cool. Starting, as ever, armed with a notebook of poems and ideas, Florence had just arrived in New York in March 2020 to begin recording the record with Jack Antonoff when Covid-19 forced a retreat to London. The imagery resonated with Florence, who had been touring nonstop for more than a decade, and in lockdown felt oddly prescient. The album received acclaim from music critics and is ranked as the best-received album in the band's release history. She argues with a lover about the endpoints of her ambition, whether art is useless, if she can build a version of motherhood that would mesh into her own mythology.

Every album is a reaction to the last thing you made, and I was a little sick of my own [expletive], which is heavy piano. AS A WELCOME TO OUR NEW FOLLOWERS, AND A THANK YOU TO EVERYONE WHO TRULY EMBRACED DANCE FEVER IN THE MOST CREATIVE AND BEAUTIFUL WAYS. Work on the album was originally scheduled for early 2020 in New York City; however, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, recording took place in London instead. It conjures up what Florence missed most in the midst of lockdown—clubs, dancing at festivals, being in the whirl of movement and togetherness—and the hope of reunions to come.

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The image and concept of dance, and choreomania, remained central as Florence wove her own experiences of dance - a discipline she turned to in the early days of sobriety - with the folkloric elements of a moral panic from the Middle Ages. Unlike another Antonoff-produced pandemic reverie, Lorde’s Solar Power, Welch struggles against the wisdom she seeks to impart; we hear her wrestling with the knowledge she’s acquired, not merely delivering it. Yeung, gave the album four out of five stars and likened it to the band's previous releases Lungs (2009) and How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful (2015) in "emotional depth and uplifting power".There was this sense that everyone was so happy to be working again after years of being stuck inside, like we had all just come up blinking into the sunlight. The album cover was photographed by Autumn de Wilde, who also filmed music videos for the album's three singles: " King", " My Love" and " Free", as well as the song "Heaven Is Here".