and ranging in musical style from baroque to soul to rock. Their first album, Lungs, came out in 2009, followed by an extended edition in early 2010 with eleven additional songs. 

In her debut album, Lungs, Florence Welch’s voice and the Machine’s epic instrumentation crafts a sound so beautiful and strange that one gets lost in flowing dreamscapes of sound; so lost perhaps that you could even overlook the lyrics.

This band sounds like wind on a foggy hill, and Florence is a banshee, luring the unsuspecting listener ever closer to a watery death. This theme of drowning pervades the album, in an obvious and literal sense in “Heavy in Your Arms”: “I was a heavy heart to carry/ My feet dragged across the ground/ And he took me to the river/ Where he slowly let me drown…” or in a more psychological sense of drowning within emotion in “Howl”: “If you could only see/ the beast you’ve made of me/ I’m howling in the night/ it seems you’ve set it running free.”

Her lyrics embody both an innocence and, beneath, a dark and terrible passion. The nightmare landscapes described by her are only accentuated by harps and booming drums. An album that starts off somewhat upbeat with “Dog Days Are Over,” falls to its knees and declares, “I love you so much, I’m going to let you kill me,” by track three. Then it’s back to the darkly up-tempo “Howl” (think “Hungry Like the Wolf” with a psychedelic twist.) Next, and out of nowhere on an otherwise choral and majestic album, comes “Kiss With a Fist,” a humorous and jangling take on an abusive relationship where Florence again bares her fangs, albeit in a smile.

In the latter half of the album, she pulls out all the stops and every song ends with a choir in full lamentation. “Cosmic Love,” which proclaims an inner darkness, and “Blinding,” which sports the line, “No more clawing like a crow for a boy for a body in a garden,” are both heart-rending. Some of the highlights on the extended edition are “Heavy in Your Arms,” a rolling dirge that is as powerful as wall of crashing water, and a demo version of “Ghosts,” which later became the moving hymn “I’m Not Calling You A Liar.” From its up-beat dreamlike beginning, through a darkly romantic middle, to the inescapable, softly booming finish, this is one of the best new albums that I have listened to in quite a while.