Florence And The Machine
Lungs
(Island)
Reviewed by Edd McCracken

Oh to have been in the room when the music world's puppet masters were trying to figure out what niche to cram Florence And The Machine into.

"So, let me get this straight," someone no doubt asked. "She writes songs about coffins, her lead single has a refrain about raising it up' that wouldn't sound out of place if sung by the locals in The Wicker Man, and she dresses like a pale scarecrow that lost a fight with a primary school's stash of crepe paper? And she's a ginger?"

"Exactly," someone else would have replied. "Oh, and her lead instrument is the harp."

Rather wonderfully, Florence And The Machine is all these things and more.

The pop world is currently going through another year of plenty for female performers. Little Boots and La Roux have already sashayed onto the 2009 stage, following on from where Duffy and Adele left off last year. But despite all the hype Little Boots has yet to convincingly trample upon the charts. La Roux has made a significant dent with In For The Kill, an icily effective piece of 1980s revivalism, but one that is hard to warm to. It's a song that is not quite human, the pop equivalent of hugging a replicant from Blade Runner.

And on the evidence of debut album, Lungs, 22-year-old Florence Welch and her machine could well trump them both with a collection of songs that dare to mix Adam And The Ants style marches with Kate Bush balladeering, and gospel with paganism. It's an album of mixed up anatomy: at the centre of Lungs is a dark, thumping heart.

Take Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up), the galloping main single, for example. It is already on the cusp of becoming the sound of the summer, which is quite the feat for a song featuring a chorus about raising up an offering, and ominously asking who is the lamb and who is the knife?'. It is easily the most compelling song about blood sacrifice outside a Church of Scotland hymnal. At festivals, when Florence tails Rabbit Heart with You've Got The Love, Candi Staton's early 1990s gospel-tinged club anthem, it is greeted by an almost druid frenzy.

And then there is the harp, an much overlooked instrument last seen in the arms of Sting during his mediaeval revivalist phase and championed by indie-darling Joanna Newsom, whose Marge Simpson croak and massive hype failed to disguise how rambling and sparse her songs were.

But Florence is focused, sometimes cramming in several melodies and ideas within each four-minute song. And unlike Newsom, her harp is backed up with a Machine, which at times is like WallE, while at others it is The Terminator on steroids while glugging Red Bull - nowhere more so than on Cosmic Love. Like Rabbit Heart, it starts delicately. Piano chords and the harp mingle. She sings sweetly about how a falling star fell from your heart into my eyes'. All of which sounds very nice and worthy of William Blake's gentler moments. But then it takes a gothic U-turn. I screamed aloud as it tore through them and now it has left me blind', she wails, which is probably a more accurate description of a star-eyeball interface.

The song switches from the wispy and ephemeral to a thudding chorus, powered by what sounds like a war-crazed army drumming for blood. At its climax, Florence implores that she will stay in the darkness. Which neatly sums up the feel of the whole album: it's like going on a first date with a sweet, quiet and bookish girl who then takes you naked bungee jumping or to play chicken blindfolded on the M8. And it is equally thrilling.

***

El Dog
The Lamps Of Terrahead
(Lo-Five)

Epic, keening post-rock has become one of Glasgow's premier musical exports of late, and El Dog look like four promising apprentices - especially because this, their debut album, has been mixed by Iain Cook of the much-missed Aereogramme, a man who knows more than most about wrenching every last drop of emotion from recorded sound. Yet while there's no denying El Dog are passionate about their sonic storms, it's hard for anyone else to get a handle: their rich and admittedly impressive production has created a layer of gloss that blunts the music's edge. The other problem is frontman Bob Rafferty's singing, which similarly suffers from being perhaps a little too slick for the songs and occasionally ends up on the wrong side of self-pitying, as on the wonderfully named and briefly exquisite Ha Ha! Nae Joy! They're arguably at their best when they shiver off the angst and break out of genre cliche: the choppy, almost Factory-esque funk at the end of Glass Of Water hints at ideas way more interesting than simply being Snow Patrol's heavier little brothers.
Simon Stuart

Wilco
Wilco (The Album)
Nonesuch

After the majestic A Ghost Is Born, Wilco's last album, Sky Blue Sky, while pretty and worthy, seemed to lack something - perhaps the sense of insecurity, perhaps the tunes, of its predecessor. Luckily Wilco seem to have upped their game here, starting with Wilco (The Song) a bouncy rocker that gives out all the love leader Jeff Tweedy, below, has for his fans. It's sincere and effective, and there's more. Although You and I is a sweet, if insubstantial duet with Feist, I'll Fight is a steely rocker and You Never Know is a piano-prodding, swinging song which urges the youth to stop thinking about the end of the world and do something better instead. The whole album is beautifully produced and suffused with a kind of mature smarts which could, in other hands, be smug or pompous, but in Tweedy's hands sounds comforting and life-affirming. Two tracks stand out: old-school experimental rocker, Blue Black Nova, is a twirling vortex, replete with needling guitars and an uncomfortable narrative, while the closing ballad Everlasting Everything is simply beautiful. It's great to have them back, America's best band.
Phil Miller

La Roux
La Roux
(Polydor)

THE great musical divide between parents and their children has finally collapsed. While mum and dad are at 1980s reunion tours, their offspring are at hot-ticket gigs headlined by La Roux (who sounds like she's been rummaging through Steve Strange and Vince Clarke's recycle bins). As hit singles In For The Kill and Bulletproof have shown, La Roux - aka Elly Jackson from south London - knows how to sculpt an insanely catchy pop ditty, and there's often a nice, crisp bite to her synthesiser sound. However, when she's singing in her top register, which is most of the time on her debut album, her voice is constantly strained and eternally annoying - the Duffy of electronica, in other words. As the year progresses, inspired by the likes of La Roux and Little Boots, expect to see more pretty young things uploading their keyboard compositions to MySpace sites as lo-fi bedroom culture abandons boys and their guitars. Whether or not there's enough substance across the spread of La Roux's material to get beyond 2009 is another matter.
Alan Morrison

Discovery
LP
(XL Recordings)

HOW you feel about the debut disc from New York duo Discovery depends on your tolerance for preppiness in pop. No matter how catchy its melodies or compelling its beats, this summery confection remains music for the head rather than the feet: the sound of postmodernism turned up to 11. The chaps in question are Rostam Batmanglij from Vampire Weekend (Ivy Leaguers with a suspiciously well-played copy of Paul Simon's Graceland) and Wes Miles from Ra Ra Riot (pleasingly mournful cello-powered indie introspectionists), and over 10 tracks they cook up a woozy brew of synthpop, spacepop, soul and R'n'B. The skittish rhythms and shimmery computer-game melodies - not to mention the relentlessly autotuned vocals - teeter on the edge of sickly-sweetness, but great big throbs of fat synth bass provide a welcome counterweight.

A dreamy, timely cover of The Jackson Five's I Want You Back adds to the affecting sense of wistfulness that pervades the whole affair. A Style Council for the 21st century, then ... well, why not? In my book, that's high praise indeed.
Simon Stuart