Florence and the Machine: Ceremonials – review

(Island)The mood of Florence Welch's second album is set by the cover, on which Welch appears to be posing for Dante Gabriel Rossetti. The mood of the disc inside, too, is decidedly pre-Raphaelite: a gothic fever dream of romance, striving for intensity without quite capturing it. "All of the ghouls come out to play," she sings in Shake It Out, which just about nails it: the ghouls are only ever playing, never actually threatening. It echoes a more recent past, too: the shadow of Siouxsie and th...

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