Florence + the machine

If you've had enough of fluffy duets about being lucky in love and wannabe soul singers who cry that they can't breathe, 24-year-old Brit vocalist Florence Welch should wake you up.
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Welch, a Mercury prize nominee released her impressive debut Lungs last year in fact, and it's now available on the shelves in India.

Welch does love songs too, but writes twisted lines and sings with a little more soul and depth "Happiness hit her like a train on a track /Coming towards her stuck still no turning back," she sings in the opening track Dog Days Are Over completely letting the vocals direct the track beginning it like a lazy love song until it swells into an anthem, complete with marching beats and claps.

The album's fantastic production quality takes a track like Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up) into the same space as Coldplay's Viva La Vida.

The shuffling drums, the rousing harmonies in the chorus and the feeling that Welch puts into the track recall the spirit of Coldplay's last album.

Welch and her group, which she calls The Machine have skilfully managed to take the sound of Lungs from power pop (Dog Days Are Over) to goth rock (think a softer Evanescence) to soul (Girl With One Eye). Welch's lines draw brilliantly vivid images, all very physical.
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In the soul-on-fire I'm Not Calling You A Liar, she sings about a "ghost my lungs and it sighs in my sleep." And in Kiss With A Fist, her vocals deliver the brute physical force of the lyrics impressively: "You hit me once/I hit you back/You gave a kick/I gave a slap/You smashed a plate over my head/Then I set fire to our bed."

Welch's versatility sneaks up on you and sucks you back into her sound, long after you've stopped playing the album.

Artist Lungs
Label Universal Music
PRICE Rs 295