Florence + The Machine has shared details of her 5th studio album Dance Fever and released new single My Love.
Dance Fever will be released on 13 May via Polydor Records.
Florence + The Machine recorded Dance Fever predominately in London over the course of the pandemic. The album takes stock of what she missed most in the midst of lockdown – clubs, dancing at festivals, movement and togetherness as well as the hope of the return of those things.
Just before the pandemic Florence had become fascinated by choreomania, a Renaissance phenomenon in which groups of people – sometimes thousands – danced wildly to the point of exhaustion, collapse and death. This was a concept and image which hit home with Florence after almost non-stop touring for more than a decade.
She arrived in New York in March 2020 to start recording the album with Jack Antonoff when Covid-19 cause a change of plans and return to London. The songs were transformed.
New single My Love took on a new direction with the help of Glass Animals‘ Dave Bayley. The song had started as a ‘sad little poem’ before Bayley suggested adding synths and expanding the track and energy.
The track is accompanied by a video from acclaimed director Autumn de Wilde which debuted this morning.
Lyrically, she took inspiration from the tragic heroines of pre-Raphaelite art, the gothic fiction of Carmen Maria Machado and Julia Armfield, the visceral wave of folk horror film from The Wicker Man and The Witch to Midsommar.
Florence and the Machine – Dance Fever – artwork courtesy Autumn de Wilde