It's a more thoughtful and restrained album than you may have expected, but it's bound to bring Florence + The Machine a whole new raft of fans. So what we get is Florence trying very hard to top the gargantuan drums and cascading harps and chest-thumping choruses of Lungs hits like "Cosmic Love" and "Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up)" on damn near every song. There is a change of tempo from their previous album, but this just adds a new dimension and enjoyment for the listener. The album's sound is described as baroque pop, [1] art pop, [2] indie pop, [3] neo soul, [4] power pop [5] and gothic pop.

After a couple of listens I can confidently say that Ceremonials has surpassed the dizzying highs of Lungs. Other bonuses include a few demos of some of the record's huger cuts (and the term "demo" is relative here-- these stripped-back tracks are still pristine). Ceremonials debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart, becoming the band's second consecutive number-one album.

To promote the album, Florence and the Machine embarked on their second worldwide tour titled the Ceremonials Tour on 13 October 2011. The following year at the 55th Annual Grammy Awards, Ceremonials received a nomination for Best Pop Vocal Album, and "Shake It Out" was nominated for Best Pop Duo/Group Performance. The album also debuted at number one in Australia, Ireland and New Zealand, [99] [100] [101] and was certified gold by the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) in its first week of sales. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Condé Nast. At the 55th Annual Grammy Awards, the album received a nomination for Best Pop Vocal Album, while " Shake It Out" was nominated for Best Pop Duo/Group Performance.

The track charted at number 82 in the UK, [47] while reaching number three in Australia, the band's highest-peaking single in that country to date. The cover artwork for Ceremonials was photographed by Florence and the Machine's longtime collaborator Tom Beard. On 12 September 2011, Canadian radio broadcaster Alan Cross revealed that Florence and the Machine's second album would be titled Ceremonials. At Metacritic, which assigns a weighted mean rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 75, based on 36 reviews.Andy Gill of The Independent expressed, "[I]n cementing one style, some of the possibilities offered by Lungs have been choked off. Lead single What the Water Gave Me, issued as a standalone cut in August, is brooding and windswept, its harp twinkling eerily in the ether.

Instead of Lungs' largely charming yet discombobulating diversity, Ceremonials suffers from a repetitiveness that's akin to looking at a skyline filled with 100-story behemoths lined-up one after the other, blocking out everything but their own size. He also commented on the album by saying, "I've heard a little more than half the record and it is big, soulful and powerful.

Spectrum (Say My Name)" was released on 5 July 2012, and fuelled by a remix by Scottish DJ Calvin Harris, became Florence and the Machine's first number-one single in the UK. Welch is 25, and she's likely chuffed at the thought of bringing these massive songs to equally immense crowds at festivals all over the world for the next two years.

I still like the first half best, especially Never Let Me Go and Breaking Down, but its just great to hear all these new songs from Flo after such a long gap.After trying out a few different producers and styles-- garage-pop; vampy twinkle-pop; and tribal, mystic-pop-- on her debut, Lungs, Welch settles almost exclusively on the latter for Ceremonials, bringing along producer Paul Epworth, who was so good at the mystic stuff on the first record, to oversee the whole thing.