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| 23 year
old Florence Welch, the 'Florence' in Florence
+
the
Machine, is an
amazing talent. She is a singer/songwriter who during the last couple
of years conquered Britain & Europe with her live shows;
released her #1-selling, Mercury Prize-nominated debut album "Lungs";
and won the Best British Album award at the 2010 BRITS. Yet here in
America,
in 2010, she is only beginning her assault. Her first North American
tour, consisting of small venue gigs in 7 US & 2 Canadian cities
over a couple
weeks in April is now history but luckily Seattle was included. Florence
+ the Machine played a sold-out show at Seattle's Showbox at the
Market
on Thursday April 15th. Paul is so happy to have been among the
Brit-heavy crowd of 1000 or so fans. Being a
school night - unfortunately - Jennie and Brittany couldn't come along. The first 7 photos were taken by Paul from his vantage point towards the back of the pit, the rest were taken by pros up at the front and made publicly available via Flickr. The 80 minute set included most of debut album Lungs plus a non-album B-side. For her encore, Florence came back to the stage wearing a dark colored top, and launched right into Kiss With A Fist. Halfway through she unexpectedly propelled herself off the front of the stage onto the outstretched hands below and crowd surfed to the delight of the audience. I thought something impromptu was about to happen and am so happy that I was able to capture it. From the Flickr pools it looks like the pros left before the encore. So I got the scoop... he-he! Florence may already be one of the greatest female pop/rock vocalists of all time. And her extremely theatrical live show evokes memories of all the great visual performers in rock from Freddie Mercury and David Bowie to Annie Lennox and Tina Turner. But stylistically, when Florence opens her mouth, the sound that blasts out reminds us of Grace Slick of Jefferson Airplane more than any other. Florence on her CD, while great, doesn't begin to prepare you for how good she is live. If you have even the slightest chance to catch one of her shows do yourself a huge favor and go. You won't be sorry. Here are a couple of video clips from the Seattle show. I shot Hurricane Drunk from the bar area on my Canon still camera - hence only a short clip. Drumming Song was posted on YouTube by someone else. |
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