Ceremonials
Encyclopedia
Ceremonials is the second studio album
by English indie pop
band Florence and the Machine
, released in the United Kingdom on 31 October 2011 by Island Records
. The album is noted for having a larger, more baroque pop
sound than its predecessor, Lungs
, with critics drawing comparisons to art rock
artist Kate Bush
. Ceremonials debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart
, becoming the band's second consecutive number-one album in the UK. English novelist Emma Forrest
contributed an essay to the album, which can be found in the booklet of the CD edition.
magazine confirmed that after the release of the song "Heavy in Your Arms
" for the soundtrack to The Twilight Saga: Eclipse
, Welch entered the studio for a two-week session to record with producer Paul Epworth
(Adele
, Bloc Party
), with whom she worked on the band's debut album Lungs
(2009). She said that the two recordings that came out of that session were inspired by science because "a lot of her family are doctors or trying to become doctors, so much of her conversations are fixated on medical stuff." One of the tracks, "Strangeness and Charm" (now exclusive to the deluxe edition), was debuted on 2 May 2010 at the Olympia Theatre
in Dublin, Ireland, during their Cosmic Love Tour
. The song was later recorded live at the Hammersmith Apollo on another stop of The Cosmic Love Tour and was released on a deluxe re-release of Lungs titled Between Two Lungs along with other live tracks and previously unreleased B-sides. Welch describes the song as "about seven minutes long and pretty relentless" and also "dancey, but it's also dark as well", featuring "relentless drums and heavy, droning bass."
In an interview with the Gibson
website on 17 February 2011, guitarist Rob Ackroyd stated, "Work on the second album has begun with Paul Epworth and there is talk of booking out Abbey Road
for a month in April/May to record." In June 2011, Epworth told BBC 6 Music that the album would probably be finished "by the end of July" and described the sound as "a lot less indie and lot more soulful". He also indicated that there were sixteen songs up for inclusion on the album, but that this would be reduced upon the time of release.
During their North American tour, Florence and the Machine debuted "What the Water Gave Me
" at the Greek Theatre
in Berkeley, California
on 12 June 2011. On 23 August 2011, the song was released on iTunes
as a buzz single from the album, along with an accompanying video on their VEVO
channel on YouTube
.
On 23 August 2011, Pitchfork Media
confirmed after the release of "What the Water Gave Me" that the album has the band working solely with Epworth. On 12 September 2011, Alan Cross
confirmed that Florence and the Machine's second album would be titled Ceremonials. He also commented on the album by saying: "I've heard a little more than half the record and it is big, soulful and powerful. Think Adele or Tori Amos
but with some serious Kate Bush
DNA, especially with the rhythm section."
Regarding the album's title, Welch told MTV News
: "It was an art installation done in the '70s, this video piece all done on Super 8, this big procession of kind of coquette-style hippies and all these different colored robes and masks, and it was all to do with color, really saturated, brightly colored pastas and balloons. I saw it a couple years ago, and it was called 'Ceremonials' and then, like, Roman numerals after it. And the word sort of stuck with me, and I think the whole idea of performance, and kind of putting on this outfit and going out almost to find some sort of exorcism or absolution, to kind of get outside yourself, there's a sense of ceremony to it." Welch also revealed that she wanted to call the album Violence, stating: "I wanted to make an album that sounded like the soundtrack to Baz Luhrmann
's Romeo + Juliet
, the violence mixed with the classical Shakespearean drama mixed with the pop and the pulp, extreme neon stuff." In an interview with The Guardian
, she described the album as "much bigger" and categorised its genre as "chamber soul", a mixture of soul music
and chamber pop
. She also discussed plans to perform at multiple festivals in 2012, describing this as her favourite way to perform live.
, which assigns a normalised
rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average
score of 76, based on 33 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Laura Foster of Clash
magazine called the album a "confident, cohesive effort" and believed that "[t]he steady hand of Paul Epworth on production has helped Florence to take the winning formula of her distinctive vocals and melodies, the twinkling harps and thundering drums, and augment it with string arrangements, subtle electro touches, and gospel choirs." Entertainment Weekly
s Kyle Anderson praised it as a "confident, unflinching tour de force" and commented, "If her acclaimed 2009 debut, Lungs, was a scrappy shrine to survival and empowerment, its follow-up is a baroque cathedral, bedecked with ornate tapestries made of ghostly choirs, pagan-rhythmic splendor, and a whole lot of harp. And though that sounds like a mess of New Age
goop, Ceremonials genuinely rocks." Allmusic critic James Christopher Monger awarded the album four-and-a-half out of five stars and wrote, "Bigger and bolder than 2009's excellent Lungs, Ceremonials rolls in like fog over the Thames
, doling out a heavy-handed mix of Brit-pop
-infused neo-soul
anthems and lush, movie trailer-ready ballads that fuse the bluesy, electro-despair of Adele
with the ornate, gothic melodrama of Kate Bush
and Floodland
-era Sisters of Mercy
." Barry Nicolson of the NME
rated the album eight out of ten, arguing that "by taking what worked about Lungs and amplifying those qualities to a natural, satisfying conclusion, Florence has made a near-great pop record that should afford her the creative freedom to do whatever the hell she wants next time around."
Rolling Stone
writer Jody Rosen
commented that the album contains "turbulent ballads, powered by booming drums and vocal chorales rising like distant thunder, full of Welch's banshee wails. The music touches on Celtic melodies, bluesy rock stomps, nods to goth and gospel. But the wind never stops howling." He continued, "This is a very British record, drawing on a tradition of iconoclastic U.K. pop that stretches from Kate Bush and Siouxsie and the Banshees to PJ Harvey
." Margaret Wappler of the Los Angeles Times
gave the album three-and-a-half out of four stars, stating that "Welch has struck a fantastic and necessary balance. She's found a way to honor her Bjorkian
appetites for lavish orchestral spectacle while finding the depth and subtlety of her voice." The Daily Telegraph
s Neil McCormick gave Ceremonials four out of five stars and viewed it as "a giant, fluid, emotionally resonant album, performed as if Welch's very sanity is at stake", adding that "[c]ontrary to the name she has given her band, the Machine feel organic and human, providing an epic, full-blooded soundtrack to Welch's voodoo, in which rhythm, melody and chanting are employed to drive out neuroses and insecurities, characterised as ghosts and devils." Rob Harvilla of Spin
magazine raved that on Ceremonials, Welch is "a bloodied, bloodying songbird in a gilded cage of immaculately crafted, slow-burn, chest-beating empowerment anthems, gripping steel bars that her elegantly volcanic voice could shred at any moment", while noting that "[s]he's so much better than her material that her material is rendered immaterial." In a review for The Observer
, Kitty Empire
gave the album three out of five stars and opined that "on the gale-force Ceremonials the vocals often sound multitracked" and that "[t]he production is high-church—harps, bells, shimmers, strings and keyboards that seem to breed over the course of the album. The cresting choruses are never less than heroic. As an arty eccentric, Welch is sometimes lazily compared to Kate Bush. Here, though, that tenuous link works. The album's boofing drum sound comes straight out of Bush's 80s output; on balance, a neat trick."
Daily Mail
s Adrian Thrills gave the album five stars and stated, "Letting her vivid imagination run wild, she has produced a cohesive album that explores possibilities her debut merely hinted at; Ceremonials is not just bigger, it is better." He further commented that the album is "different, framing Florence's whooping vocals with pealing church bells, twinkling harps, African chants and the kind of chugging, orchestral strings beloved by Arcade Fire." Michael Hann of The Guardian
concluded that the album "always sounds wonderful—producer Paul Epworth has created a warm, soft, four-poster featherbed of sound for Welch to emote over—but it never really satisfies. One yearns for Welch's wonderful voice to be delivering lines of more import than the nonsense she's often delivering here." Slant Magazine
's Matthew Cole wrote that "[t]he first four tracks of Ceremonials are essentially flawless", but remarked that the album "can't help but get weaker as it continues, a fact which owes less to the quality of the songwriting than to the album's length [...] and a far less dynamic second act." Andy Gill of The Independent
expressed, "[I]n cementing one style, some of the possibilities offered by Lungs have been choked off. The only time [Welch] and The Machine stray from the formula is the Krautrock
-disco motorik of 'Spectrum'; elsewhere, declamatory piano chords and burring organ underpin the banked, soaring vocals that are her trademark [...] It's all impressive, though 'Seven Devils', with Halloween-esque keyboard, overdoes the corny horror melodrama terribly." Alix Buscovic of BBC Music
felt that the album "offers the pomp, but somehow not quite the power, of Welch's debut: this is all grandeur without any grace. The more weight and length [...] given to the songs, the less impact they have and the more wearied they leave you." Pitchfork Media
's Ryan Dombal was equally unimpressed, writing, "Instead of Lungs largely charming yet discombobulating diversity, Ceremonials suffers from a repetitiveness that's akin to looking at a skyline filled with 100-story behemoths lined-up one after the other, blocking out everything but their own size."
Q magazine
named Ceremonials the best album of 2011.
, selling approximately 38,000 copies in its first two days of release and 94,050 copies altogether in its first week. It fell to number three the following week, selling 58,278 copies. On 18 November 2011, Ceremonials was certified gold by the British Phonographic Industry
(BPI). The album also debuted at number one in Ireland
, Australia
and New Zealand
, and was certified gold by the Australian Recording Industry Association
(ARIA) in its first week of sales. Selling 105,000 units in its opening week in the United States, the album entered the Billboard 200
at number six, while debuting atop the Rock Albums, Digital Albums and Alternative Albums charts.
" was released on 23 August 2011 as the first taster of Ceremonials. The song attained moderate chart success, entering the UK Singles Chart
at number twenty-four for the week of 28 August 2011.
"Shake It Out
" was released on 30 September 2011 as the album's first official single, and premiered exclusively on XFM London
on 14 September 2011.
"No Light, No Light
" is confirmed to be the second single from the album. The band performed the song on Later... with Jools Holland on 1 November. The video was released on 18 November 2011 on YouTube
.
Additional
Studio album
A studio album is an album made up of tracks recorded in the controlled environment of a recording studio. A studio album contains newly written and recorded or previously unreleased or remixed material, distinguishing itself from a compilation or reissue album of previously recorded material, or...
by English indie pop
Indie pop
Indie pop is a genre of alternative rock music that originated in the United Kingdom in the mid 1980s, with its roots in the Scottish post-punk bands on the Postcard Records label in the early '80s, such as Orange Juice, Josef K and Aztec Camera, and the dominant UK independent band of the mid...
band Florence and the Machine
Florence and the Machine
Florence and the Machine is the recording name of English musician Florence Welch and a collaboration of other artists who provide music for her voice. Florence and the Machine's sound has been described as a combination of various genres, including rock and soul...
, released in the United Kingdom on 31 October 2011 by Island Records
Island Records
Island Records is a record label that was founded by Chris Blackwell in Jamaica. It was based in the United Kingdom for many years and is now owned by Universal Music Group...
. The album is noted for having a larger, more baroque pop
Baroque pop
Baroque pop, Baroque rock, or English baroque, often used interchangeably with chamber pop/rock, is a pop and rock music subgenre which originated in the mid-1960s in the United Kingdom and United States...
sound than its predecessor, Lungs
Lungs (album)
Lungs is the debut album by English indie pop band Florence and the Machine, released 6 July 2009 by Island Records. The album debuted at number two on the UK Albums Chart for five weeks after its release, behind The Essential Michael Jackson compilation. On 10 January 2010 the album returned to...
, with critics drawing comparisons to art rock
Art rock
Art rock is a subgenre of rock music that originated in the United Kingdom in the 1960s, with influences from art, avant-garde, and classical music. The first usage of the term, according to Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, was in 1968. Influenced by the work of The Beatles, most notably their Sgt...
artist Kate Bush
Kate Bush
Kate Bush is an English singer-songwriter, musician and record producer. Her eclectic musical style and idiosyncratic vocal style have made her one of the United Kingdom's most successful solo female performers of the past 30 years.In 1978, at the age of 19, Bush topped the UK Singles Chart...
. Ceremonials debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart
UK Albums Chart
The UK Albums Chart is a list of albums ranked by physical and digital sales in the United Kingdom. It is compiled every week by The Official Charts Company and broadcast on a Sunday on BBC Radio 1 , and published in Music Week magazine and on the OCC website .To qualify for the UK albums chart...
, becoming the band's second consecutive number-one album in the UK. English novelist Emma Forrest
Emma Forrest
Emma Forrest , is a British journalist, novelist and screenwriter. Born in London, she currently resides in Los Angeles.-Journalism:...
contributed an essay to the album, which can be found in the booklet of the CD edition.
Background and development
NMENME
The New Musical Express is a popular music publication in the United Kingdom, published weekly since March 1952. It started as a music newspaper, and gradually moved toward a magazine format during the 1980s, changing from newsprint in 1998. It was the first British paper to include a singles...
magazine confirmed that after the release of the song "Heavy in Your Arms
Heavy in Your Arms
"Heavy in Your Arms" is a song by British act Florence and the Machine. Written by Florence Welch and Paul Epworth, the song was initially recorded and included on the The Twilight Saga: Eclipse soundtrack, but later released as a single on 15 November 2010 in order to promote the re-release of...
" for the soundtrack to The Twilight Saga: Eclipse
The Twilight Saga: Eclipse (soundtrack)
The Twilight Saga: Eclipse is the soundtrack album to the film The Twilight Saga: Eclipse. It is the third soundtrack in the film's chronology, and was released on June 8, 2010. The soundtrack was once again co-produced by Alexandra Patsavas, the music supervisor for the previous two films...
, Welch entered the studio for a two-week session to record with producer Paul Epworth
Paul Epworth
Paul Epworth is an award-winning British music producer, musician, and songwriter. His production credits include Adele, Cee Lo Green, Florence and the Machine, Plan B, Friendly Fires, Bloc Party, Primal Scream, The Rapture, Jack Peñate, Kate Nash and Maxïmo Park.-Lomax:From 2002-2004 Paul provided...
(Adele
Adele (singer)
Adele Laurie Blue Adkins , known professionally as Adele, is an English singer-songwriter. She was the first recipient of the Brit Awards Critics' Choice and was named the number-one predicted breakthrough act of 2008 in an annual BBC poll of music critics, Sound of 2008...
, Bloc Party
Bloc Party
Bloc Party are a British Indie rock band, composed of Kele Okereke , Russell Lissack , Gordon Moakes , and Matt Tong...
), with whom she worked on the band's debut album Lungs
Lungs (album)
Lungs is the debut album by English indie pop band Florence and the Machine, released 6 July 2009 by Island Records. The album debuted at number two on the UK Albums Chart for five weeks after its release, behind The Essential Michael Jackson compilation. On 10 January 2010 the album returned to...
(2009). She said that the two recordings that came out of that session were inspired by science because "a lot of her family are doctors or trying to become doctors, so much of her conversations are fixated on medical stuff." One of the tracks, "Strangeness and Charm" (now exclusive to the deluxe edition), was debuted on 2 May 2010 at the Olympia Theatre
Olympia Theatre, Dublin
The Olympia Theatre is a concert hall/theatre venue in Dublin, Ireland, located in Dame Street.-History:Built in 1879, it was originally called the "Star of Erin Music Hall". Two years later in 1881, it was renamed "Dan Lowrey's Music Hall" and was renamed again in 1889 to "Dan Lowrey's Palace of...
in Dublin, Ireland, during their Cosmic Love Tour
Lungs Tour
-Support acts:* Golden Silvers * The XX * Parallels * Voicst * Frankie & The Heartstrings...
. The song was later recorded live at the Hammersmith Apollo on another stop of The Cosmic Love Tour and was released on a deluxe re-release of Lungs titled Between Two Lungs along with other live tracks and previously unreleased B-sides. Welch describes the song as "about seven minutes long and pretty relentless" and also "dancey, but it's also dark as well", featuring "relentless drums and heavy, droning bass."
In an interview with the Gibson
Gibson Guitar Corporation
The Gibson Guitar Corporation, formerly of Kalamazoo, Michigan and currently of Nashville, Tennessee, manufactures guitars and other instruments which sell under a variety of brand names...
website on 17 February 2011, guitarist Rob Ackroyd stated, "Work on the second album has begun with Paul Epworth and there is talk of booking out Abbey Road
Abbey Road Studios
Abbey Road Studios is a recording studio located at 3 Abbey Road, St John's Wood, City of Westminster, London, England. It was established in November 1931 by the Gramophone Company, a predecessor of British music company EMI, its present owner...
for a month in April/May to record." In June 2011, Epworth told BBC 6 Music that the album would probably be finished "by the end of July" and described the sound as "a lot less indie and lot more soulful". He also indicated that there were sixteen songs up for inclusion on the album, but that this would be reduced upon the time of release.
During their North American tour, Florence and the Machine debuted "What the Water Gave Me
What the Water Gave Me
"What the Water Gave Me" is a song by Florence and the Machine, and the first song released from their second studio album, Ceremonials . It was written by Florence Welch with Francis White and produced by Paul Epworth. After the band performed the song in Berkeley, California on 12 June, 2011, the...
" at the Greek Theatre
Hearst Greek Theatre
The William Randolph Hearst Greek Theatre, known locally as simply the Greek Theatre, is an 8,500-seat amphitheater owned and operated by the University of California, Berkeley in Berkeley, California, USA....
in Berkeley, California
Berkeley, California
Berkeley is a city on the east shore of the San Francisco Bay in Northern California, United States. Its neighbors to the south are the cities of Oakland and Emeryville. To the north is the city of Albany and the unincorporated community of Kensington...
on 12 June 2011. On 23 August 2011, the song was released on iTunes
ITunes Store
The iTunes Store is a software-based online digital media store operated by Apple. Opening as the iTunes Music Store on April 28, 2003, with over 200,000 items to purchase, it is, as of April 2008, the number-one music vendor in the United States...
as a buzz single from the album, along with an accompanying video on their VEVO
Vevo
Vevo is a music video website. It is a joint venture among Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group, and Abu Dhabi Media with EMI licensing its content to the group without taking an ownership stake. The service was launched officially on December 8, 2009...
channel on YouTube
YouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
.
On 23 August 2011, Pitchfork Media
Pitchfork Media
Pitchfork Media, usually known simply as Pitchfork or P4k, is a Chicago-based daily Internet publication established in 1995 that is devoted to music criticism and commentary, music news, and artist interviews. Its focus is on underground and independent music, especially indie rock...
confirmed after the release of "What the Water Gave Me" that the album has the band working solely with Epworth. On 12 September 2011, Alan Cross
Alan Cross
' is a Canadian radio broadcaster and a writer on music. Alan’s obsession with music began at age six when his grandmother gave him a transistor radio—an old Lloyds—which spawned an all-consuming fascination with things that came over airwaves...
confirmed that Florence and the Machine's second album would be titled Ceremonials. He also commented on the album by saying: "I've heard a little more than half the record and it is big, soulful and powerful. Think Adele or Tori Amos
Tori Amos
Tori Amos is an American pianist, singer-songwriter and composer. She was at the forefront of a number of female singer-songwriters in the early 1990s and was noteworthy early in her career as one of the few alternative rock performers to use a piano as her primary instrument...
but with some serious Kate Bush
Kate Bush
Kate Bush is an English singer-songwriter, musician and record producer. Her eclectic musical style and idiosyncratic vocal style have made her one of the United Kingdom's most successful solo female performers of the past 30 years.In 1978, at the age of 19, Bush topped the UK Singles Chart...
DNA, especially with the rhythm section."
Regarding the album's title, Welch told MTV News
MTV News
MTV News is the news division of MTV, one of the first and most popular music television network in the U.S., as well as some of MTV's related channels around the world. MTV News began in the late 1980s with the program The Week In Rock, hosted by Kurt Loder, the first official MTV News correspondent...
: "It was an art installation done in the '70s, this video piece all done on Super 8, this big procession of kind of coquette-style hippies and all these different colored robes and masks, and it was all to do with color, really saturated, brightly colored pastas and balloons. I saw it a couple years ago, and it was called 'Ceremonials' and then, like, Roman numerals after it. And the word sort of stuck with me, and I think the whole idea of performance, and kind of putting on this outfit and going out almost to find some sort of exorcism or absolution, to kind of get outside yourself, there's a sense of ceremony to it." Welch also revealed that she wanted to call the album Violence, stating: "I wanted to make an album that sounded like the soundtrack to Baz Luhrmann
Baz Luhrmann
Mark Anthony "Baz" Luhrmann is an Australian film director, screenwriter, and producer best known for The Red Curtain Trilogy, which includes his films Strictly Ballroom, William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet and Moulin Rouge!...
's Romeo + Juliet
Romeo + Juliet (soundtrack)
William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet: Music from the Motion Picture is the soundtrack to the 1996 film of the same name. The soundtrack contained two separate releases: the first containing popular music from the film and the second containing the score to the film composed by Nellee Hooper, Craig...
, the violence mixed with the classical Shakespearean drama mixed with the pop and the pulp, extreme neon stuff." In an interview with The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
, she described the album as "much bigger" and categorised its genre as "chamber soul", a mixture of soul music
Soul music
Soul music is a music genre originating in the United States combining elements of gospel music and rhythm and blues. According to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, soul is "music that arose out of the black experience in America through the transmutation of gospel and rhythm & blues into a form of...
and chamber pop
Baroque pop
Baroque pop, Baroque rock, or English baroque, often used interchangeably with chamber pop/rock, is a pop and rock music subgenre which originated in the mid-1960s in the United Kingdom and United States...
. She also discussed plans to perform at multiple festivals in 2012, describing this as her favourite way to perform live.
Critical reception
Ceremonials has received positive reviews from most music critics. At MetacriticMetacritic
Metacritic.com is a website that collates reviews of music albums, games, movies, TV shows and DVDs. For each product, a numerical score from each review is obtained and the total is averaged. An excerpt of each review is provided along with a hyperlink to the source. Three colour codes of Green,...
, which assigns a normalised
Standard score
In statistics, a standard score indicates how many standard deviations an observation or datum is above or below the mean. It is a dimensionless quantity derived by subtracting the population mean from an individual raw score and then dividing the difference by the population standard deviation...
rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average
Weighted mean
The weighted mean is similar to an arithmetic mean , where instead of each of the data points contributing equally to the final average, some data points contribute more than others...
score of 76, based on 33 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Laura Foster of Clash
Clash (magazine)
Clash is a popular music and fashion magazine based in the United Kingdom. Its magazine title is published 12 times a year. It has a circulation of around 40,000....
magazine called the album a "confident, cohesive effort" and believed that "[t]he steady hand of Paul Epworth on production has helped Florence to take the winning formula of her distinctive vocals and melodies, the twinkling harps and thundering drums, and augment it with string arrangements, subtle electro touches, and gospel choirs." Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly is an American magazine, published by the Time division of Time Warner, that covers film, television, music, broadway theatre, books and popular culture...
s Kyle Anderson praised it as a "confident, unflinching tour de force" and commented, "If her acclaimed 2009 debut, Lungs, was a scrappy shrine to survival and empowerment, its follow-up is a baroque cathedral, bedecked with ornate tapestries made of ghostly choirs, pagan-rhythmic splendor, and a whole lot of harp. And though that sounds like a mess of New Age
New Age music
New Age music is music of various styles intended to create artistic inspiration, relaxation, and optimism. It is used by listeners for yoga, massage, meditation, and reading as a method of stress management or to create a peaceful atmosphere in their home or other environments, and is often...
goop, Ceremonials genuinely rocks." Allmusic critic James Christopher Monger awarded the album four-and-a-half out of five stars and wrote, "Bigger and bolder than 2009's excellent Lungs, Ceremonials rolls in like fog over the Thames
River Thames
The River Thames flows through southern England. It is the longest river entirely in England and the second longest in the United Kingdom. While it is best known because its lower reaches flow through central London, the river flows alongside several other towns and cities, including Oxford,...
, doling out a heavy-handed mix of Brit-pop
Britpop
Britpop is a subgenre of alternative rock that originated in the United Kingdom. Britpop emerged from the British independent music scene of the early 1990s and was characterised by bands influenced by British guitar pop music of the 1960s and 1970s...
-infused neo-soul
Neo soul
The term neo soul was originally coined by Kedar Massenburg of Motown Records in the late 1990s as a marketing category following the commercial breakthroughs of artists such as D'Angelo, Erykah Badu, Lauryn Hill, and Maxwell...
anthems and lush, movie trailer-ready ballads that fuse the bluesy, electro-despair of Adele
Adele (singer)
Adele Laurie Blue Adkins , known professionally as Adele, is an English singer-songwriter. She was the first recipient of the Brit Awards Critics' Choice and was named the number-one predicted breakthrough act of 2008 in an annual BBC poll of music critics, Sound of 2008...
with the ornate, gothic melodrama of Kate Bush
Kate Bush
Kate Bush is an English singer-songwriter, musician and record producer. Her eclectic musical style and idiosyncratic vocal style have made her one of the United Kingdom's most successful solo female performers of the past 30 years.In 1978, at the age of 19, Bush topped the UK Singles Chart...
and Floodland
Floodland
Floodland is the second album by the British band The Sisters of Mercy, which was released in 1987 and marked their commercial break-through.-Break-up of the original band:...
-era Sisters of Mercy
The Sisters of Mercy
The Sisters of Mercy are an English rock band that formed in 1980. After achieving early underground fame in UK, the band had their commercial breakthrough in mid-1980s and sustained it until the early 1990s, when they stopped releasing new recorded output in protest against their record company...
." Barry Nicolson of the NME
NME
The New Musical Express is a popular music publication in the United Kingdom, published weekly since March 1952. It started as a music newspaper, and gradually moved toward a magazine format during the 1980s, changing from newsprint in 1998. It was the first British paper to include a singles...
rated the album eight out of ten, arguing that "by taking what worked about Lungs and amplifying those qualities to a natural, satisfying conclusion, Florence has made a near-great pop record that should afford her the creative freedom to do whatever the hell she wants next time around."
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...
writer Jody Rosen
Jody Rosen
Jody Rosen is an American journalist and author. He is the music critic for the online magazine Slate, and the author of White Christmas: The Story of an American Song....
commented that the album contains "turbulent ballads, powered by booming drums and vocal chorales rising like distant thunder, full of Welch's banshee wails. The music touches on Celtic melodies, bluesy rock stomps, nods to goth and gospel. But the wind never stops howling." He continued, "This is a very British record, drawing on a tradition of iconoclastic U.K. pop that stretches from Kate Bush and Siouxsie and the Banshees to PJ Harvey
PJ Harvey
Polly Jean Harvey is an English musician, singer-songwriter, composer and occasional artist. Primarily known as a vocalist and guitarist, she is also proficient with a wide range of instruments including piano, organ, bass, saxophone, and most recently, the autoharp.Harvey began her career in...
." Margaret Wappler of the Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
gave the album three-and-a-half out of four stars, stating that "Welch has struck a fantastic and necessary balance. She's found a way to honor her Bjorkian
Björk
Björk Guðmundsdóttir , known as Björk , is an Icelandic singer-songwriter. Her eclectic musical style has achieved popular acknowledgement and popularity within many musical genres, such as rock, jazz, electronic dance music, classical and folk...
appetites for lavish orchestral spectacle while finding the depth and subtlety of her voice." The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph is a daily morning broadsheet newspaper distributed throughout the United Kingdom and internationally. The newspaper was founded by Arthur B...
s Neil McCormick gave Ceremonials four out of five stars and viewed it as "a giant, fluid, emotionally resonant album, performed as if Welch's very sanity is at stake", adding that "[c]ontrary to the name she has given her band, the Machine feel organic and human, providing an epic, full-blooded soundtrack to Welch's voodoo, in which rhythm, melody and chanting are employed to drive out neuroses and insecurities, characterised as ghosts and devils." Rob Harvilla of Spin
Spin (magazine)
Spin is a music magazine founded in 1985 by publisher Bob Guccione Jr.-History:In its early years, the magazine was noted for its broad music coverage with an emphasis on college-oriented rock music and on the ongoing emergence of hip-hop. The magazine was eclectic and bold, if sometimes haphazard...
magazine raved that on Ceremonials, Welch is "a bloodied, bloodying songbird in a gilded cage of immaculately crafted, slow-burn, chest-beating empowerment anthems, gripping steel bars that her elegantly volcanic voice could shred at any moment", while noting that "[s]he's so much better than her material that her material is rendered immaterial." In a review for The Observer
The Observer
The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...
, Kitty Empire
Kitty Empire
Kitty Empire is the pen name of a British writer and music critic.Empire was born in Montreal, Quebec in 1970 and brought up in Canada, Italy and Egypt before arriving in Britain in 1988....
gave the album three out of five stars and opined that "on the gale-force Ceremonials the vocals often sound multitracked" and that "[t]he production is high-church—harps, bells, shimmers, strings and keyboards that seem to breed over the course of the album. The cresting choruses are never less than heroic. As an arty eccentric, Welch is sometimes lazily compared to Kate Bush. Here, though, that tenuous link works. The album's boofing drum sound comes straight out of Bush's 80s output; on balance, a neat trick."
Daily Mail
Daily Mail
The Daily Mail is a British daily middle-market tabloid newspaper owned by the Daily Mail and General Trust. First published in 1896 by Lord Northcliffe, it is the United Kingdom's second biggest-selling daily newspaper after The Sun. Its sister paper The Mail on Sunday was launched in 1982...
s Adrian Thrills gave the album five stars and stated, "Letting her vivid imagination run wild, she has produced a cohesive album that explores possibilities her debut merely hinted at; Ceremonials is not just bigger, it is better." He further commented that the album is "different, framing Florence's whooping vocals with pealing church bells, twinkling harps, African chants and the kind of chugging, orchestral strings beloved by Arcade Fire." Michael Hann of The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
concluded that the album "always sounds wonderful—producer Paul Epworth has created a warm, soft, four-poster featherbed of sound for Welch to emote over—but it never really satisfies. One yearns for Welch's wonderful voice to be delivering lines of more import than the nonsense she's often delivering here." Slant Magazine
Slant Magazine
Slant Magazine is an online publication that features reviews of movies, music, TV, DVDs, theater, and video games, as well as interviews with actors, directors, and musicians. The site covers various film festivals like the New York Film Festival.- History :...
's Matthew Cole wrote that "[t]he first four tracks of Ceremonials are essentially flawless", but remarked that the album "can't help but get weaker as it continues, a fact which owes less to the quality of the songwriting than to the album's length [...] and a far less dynamic second act." Andy Gill of The Independent
The Independent
The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...
expressed, "[I]n cementing one style, some of the possibilities offered by Lungs have been choked off. The only time [Welch] and The Machine stray from the formula is the Krautrock
Krautrock
Krautrock is a generic name for the experimental music scenes that appeared in Germany in the late 1960s and gained popularity throughout the 1970s, especially in Britain. The term is a result of the English-speaking world's reception of the music at the time and not a reference to any one...
-disco motorik of 'Spectrum'; elsewhere, declamatory piano chords and burring organ underpin the banked, soaring vocals that are her trademark [...] It's all impressive, though 'Seven Devils', with Halloween-esque keyboard, overdoes the corny horror melodrama terribly." Alix Buscovic of BBC Music
BBC Music
BBC Music is a team working in the department of Audio and Music Interactive at the BBC. Responsible for the BBC Music website - the portal site to music content across the BBC website....
felt that the album "offers the pomp, but somehow not quite the power, of Welch's debut: this is all grandeur without any grace. The more weight and length [...] given to the songs, the less impact they have and the more wearied they leave you." Pitchfork Media
Pitchfork Media
Pitchfork Media, usually known simply as Pitchfork or P4k, is a Chicago-based daily Internet publication established in 1995 that is devoted to music criticism and commentary, music news, and artist interviews. Its focus is on underground and independent music, especially indie rock...
's Ryan Dombal was equally unimpressed, writing, "Instead of Lungs largely charming yet discombobulating diversity, Ceremonials suffers from a repetitiveness that's akin to looking at a skyline filled with 100-story behemoths lined-up one after the other, blocking out everything but their own size."
Q magazine
Q (magazine)
Q is a popular music magazine published monthly in the United Kingdom.Founders Mark Ellen and David Hepworth were dismayed by the music press of the time, which they felt was ignoring a generation of older music buyers who were buying CDs — then still a new technology...
named Ceremonials the best album of 2011.
Commercial performance
Ceremonials debuted at number one on the UK Albums ChartUK Albums Chart
The UK Albums Chart is a list of albums ranked by physical and digital sales in the United Kingdom. It is compiled every week by The Official Charts Company and broadcast on a Sunday on BBC Radio 1 , and published in Music Week magazine and on the OCC website .To qualify for the UK albums chart...
, selling approximately 38,000 copies in its first two days of release and 94,050 copies altogether in its first week. It fell to number three the following week, selling 58,278 copies. On 18 November 2011, Ceremonials was certified gold by the British Phonographic Industry
British Phonographic Industry
The British Phonographic Industry is the British record industry's trade association.-Structure:Its membership comprises hundreds of music companies including all four "major" record companies , associate members such as manufacturers and distributors, and hundreds of independent music companies...
(BPI). The album also debuted at number one in Ireland
Irish Albums Chart
The Irish Albums Chart is the Irish music industry standard albums popularity chart issued weekly by the Irish Recorded Music Association and compiled on its behalf by Chart-Track. Chart rankings are based on sales, which are compiled through over-the-counter retail data captured electronically...
, Australia
ARIA Charts
The ARIA charts are the main Australian music sales charts, issued weekly by the Australian Recording Industry Association. The charts are a record of the highest selling singles and albums in various genres in Australia. ARIA commenced compiling its own charts in-house from the week ending 26 June...
and New Zealand
Recording Industry Association of New Zealand
The Recording Industry Association of New Zealand is a non-profit trade association of record producers, distributors and recording artists who sell music in New Zealand...
, and was certified gold by the Australian Recording Industry Association
Australian Recording Industry Association
The Australian Recording Industry Association is a trade group representing the Australian recording industry which was established in 1983 by six major record companies, EMI, Festival, CBS, RCA, WEA and Universal replacing the Association of Australian Record Manufacturers which was formed in 1956...
(ARIA) in its first week of sales. Selling 105,000 units in its opening week in the United States, the album entered the Billboard 200
Billboard 200
The Billboard 200 is a ranking of the 200 highest-selling music albums and EPs in the United States, published weekly by Billboard magazine. It is frequently used to convey the popularity of an artist or groups of artists...
at number six, while debuting atop the Rock Albums, Digital Albums and Alternative Albums charts.
Singles
"What the Water Gave MeWhat the Water Gave Me
"What the Water Gave Me" is a song by Florence and the Machine, and the first song released from their second studio album, Ceremonials . It was written by Florence Welch with Francis White and produced by Paul Epworth. After the band performed the song in Berkeley, California on 12 June, 2011, the...
" was released on 23 August 2011 as the first taster of Ceremonials. The song attained moderate chart success, entering the UK Singles Chart
UK Singles Chart
The UK Singles Chart is compiled by The Official Charts Company on behalf of the British record-industry. The full chart contains the top selling 200 singles in the United Kingdom based upon combined record sales and download numbers, though some media outlets only list the Top 40 or the Top 75 ...
at number twenty-four for the week of 28 August 2011.
"Shake It Out
Shake It Out
"Shake It Out" is a song by English indie rock band Florence and the Machine released as the first official single from their second studio album Ceremonials . It was written by Florence Welch and Paul Epworth, while production was handled by Epworth. The song was digitally released in Australia on...
" was released on 30 September 2011 as the album's first official single, and premiered exclusively on XFM London
Xfm London
Xfm London is a commercial radio station in the United Kingdom owned by Global Radio and broadcasts on 104.9 FM in London, on digital radio via 30 DAB multiplexes across the country, Sky, TalkTalk TV and Virgin Media....
on 14 September 2011.
"No Light, No Light
No Light, No Light
"No Light, No Light" is a song by English indie rock band Florence and the Machine from their second studio album Ceremonials . The song was written by Florence Welch and Isabella Summers while the production was handled by Paul Epworth. Island Records will release the song as the second single...
" is confirmed to be the second single from the album. The band performed the song on Later... with Jools Holland on 1 November. The video was released on 18 November 2011 on YouTube
YouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
.
Track listing
(*) denotes additional producerPersonnel
Band- Florence WelchFlorence WelchFlorence Leontine Mary Welch is an English singer-songwriter, best known worldwide as the lead singer of Florence and the Machine...
– vocals, bass - Rob Ackroyd – guitar
- Christopher Lloyd Hayden – backing vocals, drums, percussion
- Tom Monger – bass guitar, harp
- Mark Saunders – backing vocals, bass, guitar, percussion
- Isabella SummersIsabella SummersIsabella Summers , also known as Isabella ‘Machine’ Summers, is a British songwriter, producer and member of British band, Florence and the Machine....
– celesta, choir, drum programming, piano, programming, strings, synthesizer, vocal engineer
Additional
- Sian Alice – backing vocals
- Max Baillie – viola
- Ben Baptie – assistant
- Tom Beard – photography
- Rusty Bradshaw – Hammond B3, keyboards
- Bravo Charlie Mike Hotel – layout
- Bullion – drum programming
- Ian Burdge – cello
- Gillon Cameron – violin
- Tabitha DenholmQueens of NoizeQueens of Noize are an English indie/disco or Wonky pop DJ duo based in London. The constituent members are Mairead Nash and Tabitha Denholm.-Career:...
– art direction - Tom ElmhirstTom ElmhirstTom Elmhirst is a British specialist music producer and mix engineer. He began his career at SARM studios in the early 90s at a time when digital audio was already becoming mainstream. Elmhirst’s experiences at SARM and with Trevor Horn have clearly influenced his current working methods...
– mixing - Paul EpworthPaul EpworthPaul Epworth is an award-winning British music producer, musician, and songwriter. His production credits include Adele, Cee Lo Green, Florence and the Machine, Plan B, Friendly Fires, Bloc Party, Primal Scream, The Rapture, Jack Peñate, Kate Nash and Maxïmo Park.-Lomax:From 2002-2004 Paul provided...
– producer, pump organ - Emma ForrestEmma ForrestEmma Forrest , is a British journalist, novelist and screenwriter. Born in London, she currently resides in Los Angeles.-Journalism:...
– liner notes - Richard George – violin
- Matty Green – assistant
- Sally Herbert – string arrangements, violin
- Peter Hutchings – assistant engineer
- Ted JensenTed JensenTed Jensen is an American recording engineer. Jensen is the chief mastering engineer at Sterling Sound. He started his career as a mastering engineer in 1976 and is currently the most active Mastering Engineer in the industry...
– mastering - Joseph Hartwell Jones – assistant engineer
- Rick Koster – violin
- Oli Langford – violin
- Henrik Michelsen – assistant engineer
- Lisa MoorishLisa MoorishLisa Moorish is an English singer-songwriter most notable for having had children fathered by musicians Liam Gallagher and Pete Doherty. She had a solo career beginning in 1989, and was the lead singer of the indie band Kill City in the early 2000s...
– backing vocals - Ben Mortimer – A&R
- Jack PeñateJack PeñateJack Fabian Peñate is an English musician and singer-songwriter signed to XL Recordings.-Early life:Jack Peñate attended St. Olave's Preparatory School, New Eltham until he left to attend Alleyn's School when he was 18 years of age...
– backing vocals - Mark Rankin – engineer, mixing
- Ben Roulston – vocal engineer
- Lucy Shaw – double bass
- Craig SilveyCraig Silvey (producer)-Early Career:Craig Silvey began his career as an engineer at Skywalker Sound working and training under producer/inventor George Massenburg and working with contemporary classical act Kronos Quartet...
– mixing - Mark "Spike" StentMark StentMark 'Spike' Stent is a British record producer, and audio engineer who has worked with The KLF, Björk, Keane, Depeche Mode, Muse, Erasure, Hard-Fi, Massive Attack, Janet Jackson, Madonna, Christina Aguilera, Marilyn Manson, Pet Shop Boys, Dave Matthews, No Doubt/Gwen Stefani, CSS, Beth Orton,...
– mixing - Nikolaj Torplarsen – piano
- Jesse Ware – backing vocals
- Bryan Wilson – assistant
- Warren Zielinski – violin
Weekly charts
| Chart (2011) | Peak position |
|---|---|
| Australian Albums Chart ARIA Charts The ARIA charts are the main Australian music sales charts, issued weekly by the Australian Recording Industry Association. The charts are a record of the highest selling singles and albums in various genres in Australia. ARIA commenced compiling its own charts in-house from the week ending 26 June... |
1 |
| Austrian Albums Chart | 12 |
| Belgian Albums Chart Ultratop 50 Ultratop 50 singles, often just Ultratop 50, is the weekly chart of fifty best-selling singles in Flanders, Belgium, and is produced and published by the Ultratop organization. The chart has existed since March 31, 1995... (Flanders) |
4 |
| Belgian Albums Chart Ultratop 50 Ultratop 50 singles, often just Ultratop 50, is the weekly chart of fifty best-selling singles in Flanders, Belgium, and is produced and published by the Ultratop organization. The chart has existed since March 31, 1995... (Wallonia) |
11 |
| Canadian Albums Chart Canadian Albums Chart The Canadian Albums Chart is the official album sales chart in Canada. It is compiled every Wednesday by U.S.-based music sales tracking company Nielsen Soundscan, and published every Thursday by Jam! Canoe and Billboard, along with its sister charts the Canadian Singles Chart and the Canadian BDS... |
4 |
| Croatian Albums Chart | 6 |
| Danish Albums Chart IFPI Denmark IFPI Denmark is the Danish branch of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry and is the official charts provider and recording sales certification body for Denmark.-Gold and platinum awards:... |
19 |
| Dutch Albums Chart MegaCharts MegaCharts is responsible for the composition and exploitation of a broad collection of official charts in the Netherlands, of which the Mega Top 50 and the Mega Album Top 100 are the most known ones. Mega Charts also provides information to the Stichting Nederlandse Top 40, of which the Dutch Top... |
14 |
| Finnish Albums Chart | 27 |
| French Albums Chart Syndicat National de l'Edition Phonographique The Syndicat national de l'édition phonographique is the inter-professional organization which protects the interests of the French record industry... |
31 |
| German Albums Chart Media Control Charts The official music charts in Germany are gathered and published by the company Media Control GfK International on behalf of Bundesverband Musikindustrie... |
11 |
| Greek Albums Chart IFPI Greece International Federation of the Phonographic Industry Greece or IFPI Greece is the Greek branch of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry and is the official charts provider and recording sales certification body for Greece. Currently two charts are compiled, one for sales of... |
12 |
| Irish Albums Chart Irish Albums Chart The Irish Albums Chart is the Irish music industry standard albums popularity chart issued weekly by the Irish Recorded Music Association and compiled on its behalf by Chart-Track. Chart rankings are based on sales, which are compiled through over-the-counter retail data captured electronically... |
1 |
| Italian Albums Chart Federation of the Italian Music Industry The Federation of the Italian Music Industry is an umbrella organization that keeps track of virtually all aspects of the music recording industry in Italy.... |
19 |
| Mexican Albums Chart Top 100 Mexico Top 100 México is a record chart which accounts for sixty percent of the albums sold in Mexico. The chart has the support of major record distributors in Mexico and is issued by the Mexican Association of Producers of Phonograms and Videograms, A.C. since 2005 on a weekly basis... |
79 |
| New Zealand Albums Chart Recording Industry Association of New Zealand The Recording Industry Association of New Zealand is a non-profit trade association of record producers, distributors and recording artists who sell music in New Zealand... |
1 |
| Norwegian Albums Chart VG-lista VG-listen is a Norwegian record chart. It is weekly presented in the newspaper VG and the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation program Topp 20. It is considered the primary Norwegian record chart, charting albums and singles from countries and continent around the world. The data is collected by... |
6 |
| Polish Albums Chart Polish Music Charts The Polish Music Charts are two official album charts and seven singles charts in Poland, provided by ZPAV, the Polish Society of the Phonographic Industry . The first, the Top 100, is a monthly chart based on data received from the album companies... |
2 |
| Portuguese Albums Chart Associação Fonográfica Portuguesa The Associação Fonográfica Portuguesa is currently the only recording industry association in Portugal. Created in 1989, it succeeded GPPFV and UNEVA .... |
5 |
| Scottish Albums Chart | 1 |
| Spanish Albums Chart | 25 |
| Swedish Albums Chart Sverigetopplistan Sverigetopplistan, earlier known as Topplistan and Hitlistan and other names, is since October 2007 the Swedish national record chart, based on sales data from Swedish Recording Industry Association .... |
21 |
| Swiss Albums Chart Swiss Music Charts The Swiss Music Charts are Switzerland's main music sales charts. The charts are a record of the highest-selling singles and albums in various genres in Switzerland.The Swiss Charts include:* Singles Top 75... |
10 |
| UK Albums Chart UK Albums Chart The UK Albums Chart is a list of albums ranked by physical and digital sales in the United Kingdom. It is compiled every week by The Official Charts Company and broadcast on a Sunday on BBC Radio 1 , and published in Music Week magazine and on the OCC website .To qualify for the UK albums chart... |
1 |
| US Billboard 200 Billboard 200 The Billboard 200 is a ranking of the 200 highest-selling music albums and EPs in the United States, published weekly by Billboard magazine. It is frequently used to convey the popularity of an artist or groups of artists... |
6 |
| US Rock Albums | 1 |
| US Alternative Albums | 1 |
Certifications
| Country | Certification |
|---|---|
| Australia Australian Recording Industry Association The Australian Recording Industry Association is a trade group representing the Australian recording industry which was established in 1983 by six major record companies, EMI, Festival, CBS, RCA, WEA and Universal replacing the Association of Australian Record Manufacturers which was formed in 1956... |
Gold |
| Canada Music Canada Music Canada was a Canadian music television miniseries which aired approximately monthly on CBC Television from 1966 to 1967.-Premise:This series featured various special productions of music and dance, from classical to modern styles.-Scheduling:... |
Gold |
| New Zealand Recording Industry Association of New Zealand The Recording Industry Association of New Zealand is a non-profit trade association of record producers, distributors and recording artists who sell music in New Zealand... |
Gold |
| United Kingdom British Phonographic Industry The British Phonographic Industry is the British record industry's trade association.-Structure:Its membership comprises hundreds of music companies including all four "major" record companies , associate members such as manufacturers and distributors, and hundreds of independent music companies... |
Gold |
Release history
| Country | Date | Label | Edition |
|---|---|---|---|
| Australia | 28 October 2011 | Universal Music Universal Music Group Universal Music Group is an American music group, the largest of the "big four" record companies by its commanding market share and its multitude of global operations... |
Standard, deluxe |
| Germany | |||
| Netherlands | |||
| Poland | |||
| Ireland | Island Records Island Records Island Records is a record label that was founded by Chris Blackwell in Jamaica. It was based in the United Kingdom for many years and is now owned by Universal Music Group... |
||
| United Kingdom | 31 October 2011 | ||
| France | Universal Music | ||
| Italy | Standard | ||
| Canada | 1 November 2011 | Standard, deluxe | |
| United States | Universal Republic Records | ||
| Italy | 8 November 2011 | Universal Music | Deluxe |
| Brazil | 16 November 2011 | Standard |