Lungs (album)

Florence Welch performing live in Shoreditch Park, London, 2007

Prior to recording Lungs, Florence Welch had considered or attempted several different projects in the music industry, including an interest in becoming a country singer, recording folk songs she had written, and collaborating with Razorlight's frontman Johnny Borrell, but ultimately she was unsatisfied with those endeavors.[4] Welch and Borrell wrote several songs together. In 2007, Welch fronted the hip hop-influenced group Ashok, recording an early version of "Kiss with a Fist", titled "Happy Slap", for their debut studio album, Plans.[4][5]

It was not until Welch began writing and recording with childhood friend Isabella Summers at Antenna Studios in London that Welch crafted a sound she wanted to develop further.[6] Distraught but also inspired from a recently failed relationship, Welch recorded with "enthusiasm over skills", stating, "I'm quite glad I never learned to play the guitar, because I think I'd write songs that were more classically structured. As it is, I've had to create my own way of writing, which isn't typical. Everything's a big crescendo."[4] For a brief while, Welch and Summers performed as a duo called Florence Robot/Isa Machine in small London venues.[7] Over the coming months, Robert Ackroyd (guitar, backing vocals), Chris Hayden (drums, percussion, backing vocals), Mark Saunders (bass guitar, backing vocals) and Tom Monger (harp) were recruited to form a band, renamed Florence and the Machine.[8] In November 2008, Welch signed a recording contract with Island Records.[4] Prior to recording the album, Welch spent a long time honing her sound while working with guitarists, intent on "[making] it into something that was a wave of sound that would envelop, something that was soaring, slightly church-like and then-doomlike."[9]

The band elected to record a shorter rendition of "Kiss with a Fist" as their debut single. Welch, however, began expanding upon the crude punk style which influenced "Kiss with a Fist" by listening to more contemporary music, particularly Arcade Fire's debut album Funeral (2004).[10] The influence of the recordings would manifest itself on the concept she had devised for Lungs, which, according to Welch, was a "scrapbook of the past five years... it's about guilt, fear, love, death, violence, nightmares, [and] dreams".[11] Ultimately, the majority of Welch's earlier self-penned compositions were rejected for the album—except "Kiss with a Fist" and "Between Two Lungs"—because they did not mesh well with the album's themes.[12] Fortunately for the group, they rehearsed and improvised some of the material in the relaxed setting of Summers' studio, allowing Welch to refine the tribal drumming backdropping Lungs's tracks, most notably "Dog Days Are Over".[13]

Florence and the Machine recorded Lungs in the United Kingdom with five different producers—Paul Epworth, James Ford, Stephen Mackey, Eg White, and Charlie Hugall. Most of the songs on the album were mixed by Cenzo Townshend.[14] The album's sound is described as indie rock, indie pop, baroque pop, art rock, art pop, alternative rock and soul with influences of punk blues, electro-rock and garage rock.[15][16][17][18][19][20][21]

Florence and the Machine performing at Brixton Academy in December 2009

Florence and the Machine announced via their website on 24 September 2010 that Lungs would be re-released on 15 November as a two-disc package titled Between Two Lungs. The reissue features new sleeve art, liner notes by Welch, and a 12-track bonus disc including live versions, remixes, Welch's mashup collaboration with Dizzee Rascal, "You Got the Dirtee Love", and "Heavy in Your Arms", which was released as a single from the soundtrack to The Twilight Saga: Eclipse (2010).[25] The live recordings are taken from the band's performance at the 2010 iTunes Festival, most of which were not previously available on the band's iTunes Festival: London 2010 EP.

On 27 February 2011, Lungs: The B-Sides was released exclusively in the United States to digital music retailers such as the iTunes Store and Amazon MP3.[26][2] This was followed by the release of a deluxe edition of Lungs in the US on 26 April 2011, featuring all 11 tracks from Lungs: The B-Sides on a bonus disc to accompany the original 13-track album.[27] On 3 July 2019, ten years after the original release of the album, the band announced that a limited "tenth anniversary edition" was available for pre-order.[28] It was released digitally on 16 August,[29] with the LPs and cassettes released the same day. An exclusive box set was released on 4 October.[30] The box set comprises the original LP; a second LP with "three previously unreleased demo tracks, a rare acoustic version of "My Boy Builds Coffins", a cover of the Beatles' "Oh! Darling" Live at Abbey Road, and a number of B sides [and] rarities."[31] It also includes "postcards and inserts, showcasing previously unseen images from the Lungs era" chosen by Welch herself.[31][32]

Professional ratings

Aggregate scores
Source	Rating
AnyDecentMusic?	7.3/10[44]
Metacritic	79/100[45]
Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[46]
The A.V. Club	A−[47]
Entertainment Weekly	A−[48]
The Guardian	[49]
NME	6/10[50]
The Observer	[51]
Pitchfork	7.2/10[20]
Q	[52]
Rolling Stone	[16]
Spin	[53]

Lungs received generally positive reviews from music critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalised rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream publications, the album received an average score of 79, based on 22 reviews.[45] James Christopher Monger of AllMusic praised it as "one of the most musically mature and emotionally mesmerizing albums of 2009" and stated, "With an arsenal of weaponry that included the daring musicality of Kate Bush, the fearless delivery of Sinéad O'Connor, and the dark, unhinged vulnerability of Fiona Apple, the London native crafted a debut that not only lived up to the machine-gun spray of buzz that heralded her arrival, but easily surpassed it."[46] Ryan Dombal wrote for Pitchfork that Florence Welch "bursts mouth wide wide over garage rock, epic soul, pint-tipping Britbeat, and—best of all—a mystic brand of pop that's part Annie Lennox, Grace Slick, and Joanna Newsom."[20] Q noted that "there's a lot going on, but Welch never confuses breadth with depth".[52] Entertainment Weekly's Joseph Brannigan Lynch opined that Welch's "immaculately constructed indie pop recalls Regina Spektor, but without the studied artiness: Welch is more concerned with raw emotional release."[48] Spin's Melissa Maerz stated, "From the way she sings, in big gulps and Teen Wolf growls, to the mystical art-rock ballads she bedazzles with sleigh bells, harps, and choirs, there's enough drama here for a Broadway musical. But her delivery is so raw that every mess feels genuine."[53]

Rolling Stone's Jon Dolan expressed that "[t]he best bits feel like being chased through a moonless night by a sexy moor witch."[16] Slant Magazine's Nick Day referred to the band's music as "particularly sensitive to studio gloss" and praised Welch's singing as "a fine balance between elegance and frenzy."[54] In a review for The Guardian, Dave Simpson viewed that Welch "has created a sonic labyrinth of xylophones, percussion, Gregorian chants and werewolves. It can sound affected, occasionally crass, but there's enough adventure to make this worth backing for the Mercury."[49] Jamie Fullerton of NME commended the work of producers James Ford and Paul Epworth, writing that they "create epic cauldron-swirls of Terminator-theme drums, Massive Attack atmospherics and twinkle-eye harp matched by Florence's grappling of skyward choruses", but found that "with the likes of 'I'm Not Calling You A Liar' and 'Howl' boasting similarly windy production yet no identifiable tunes the results sound aimless—if harmless."[50] Genevieve Koski of The A.V. Club felt that "[a]t times, Lungs borders on exhausting, careening as it does from one over-the-top track to the next. [...] But with a voice as strong and emotive as hers, it's not surprising that Welch has little use for moments of quiet contemplation."[47] Despite criticising instances of "over-smoothed" production on certain tracks, The Observer's Sheryl Garratt concluded that "there's a real joy about this debut. It's the sound of someone who has found their voice and is keen to use it – as loudly and freely as possible."[51]

Lungs debuted at number two on the UK Albums Chart (behind Michael Jackson's 2005 compilation album The Essential Michael Jackson), selling 63,020 copies in its first week[66]—the second highest amount for a debut album in 2009, after Susan Boyle's I Dreamed a Dream.[67][68] On 17 January 2010, after spending 28 consecutive weeks in the top 40,[69] the album topped the UK chart for the first time, selling 51,005 copies.[70] It spent a second consecutive week atop the chart, with 42,359 copies sold.[71] On 8 March 2019, Lungs was certified sextuple platinum by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI),[72] and had sold 1,813,557 copies in the United Kingdom by August 2019.[73]

Following the band's performance of "Dog Days Are Over" at the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards, Lungs jumped from number 44 to number 14 on the US Billboard 200 with sales of 21,000 copies, an increase of 165% from the previous week.[74] The album was certified double platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) on 25 June 2018.[75] It had sold 1,142,000 copies in the United States as of February 2013.[76] Worldwide, Lungs had sold over three million copies as of November 2011.[77]

Credits adapted from the liner notes of Lungs.[83]

• Lungs at Discogs (list of releases)