“I’d like everyone inside the O2 to hold hands. Now turn to a stranger and tell them that you love them.” Welcome to an arena show, Florence Welch style.
The 32-year-old Londoner is part barefoot hippy, part eccentric aunt. It’s a combination that might prove grating were she not in possession of one of the finest voices of her generation, a billowy instrument easily big enough to fill this cavernous space.
That she’s now choosing to rein in the multi-octave melodrama only made things more magnificent. Flo’s latest album, High As Hope, is her most stripped-back to date. Which is to say, it’s the only one of her four records that it’s safe to listen to in houses with only single-glazing.
This newfound nuance means that an evening in her presence no longer resembles the musical equivalent of being trapped in a wind tunnel. Last night’s opener, June, was a case in point, all sombre piano chords and restrained vocals. Hunger saw her swap the usual sea-and-sky lyricism to detail her personal battles with an eating disorder.
South London Forever, about the singer’s old stomping ground, “Where I’ve either sang or drank in every pub”, was full of acoustic guitar and misty-eyed nostalgia. “Young and drunk and stumbling in the street outside the Joiners Arms, like foals unsteady on their feet,” she sang.
Fans of the Florence of old, worry not. There was still war-cry vocals, tribal beats and more pirouetting than an episode of Strictly Come Dancing. Old favourite Dogs Days Are Over prompted pogoing all the way to the back, while Ship To Wreck was a showcase for her gale-force vocals and Patricia was dedicated to punk-poet Patti Smith.
Yet it was the quietest moments that resonated loudest. The End Of Love, which referenced her grandmother’s suicide, was stripped-back and breathtaking.
In something of an O2 first, she then abandoned the stage entirely, singing Delilah (not that one) from the middle of the crowd. In an age when arena shows can often feel detached and impersonal, this was the opposite: communal, generous and so exultantly brilliant that you might, indeed, be tempted turn to a stranger and tell them that you love them.
