( Rolling Stone ) -- Florence is a machine . When Florence Welch burst to prominence two years ago , fronting a five-piece rock band as vigorous as any that 's emerged from the U.K. in recent memory , it was clear that she was something special : a vocalist with extra horsepower who hurtled through love songs like a truck tearing down an empty highway on a moonless night . Florence and the Machine 's second album is as dark , robust and romantic as ever , but a revving 18-wheeler is no longer the apt metaphor for Welch 's voice . Listen to her hooting and growling on `` Only If for a Night , '' a ballad somewhere between classic soul and midnight-on-the-moors English art rock . Listen to `` Shake It Out , '' a treatise on heartbreak and spiritual rebirth . `` I am done with my graceless heart/So tonight I 'm gon na cut it out and then restart , '' she cries , over guitars and keyboards that heave and chime . This is the sound of a human turbine -- a wind machine . Video : Record Shopping with Florence Welch . On their 2009 debut , Florence and the Machine were a wiry rock band with a taste for melodrama . Here the scale is vastly inf lated : 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 . Welch is a hopeless romantic obsessed with bad romance . Song after song casts relationships as struggle , with a hair 's breadth separating rapture from disaster . For Welch , love is a force as vast and violent as nature itself . In `` What the Water Gave Me , '' a spurned lover goes to a watery grave : `` Oh , my love , do n't forget me/I let the water take me/Lay me down/Let the only sound/Be the overflow . '' Florence and the Machine 's Florence Welch on Getting Sweaty and Forgetting Her Own Lyrics . 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 . There 's also a hint of another large-lunged Englishwoman here . Listen to `` Lover to Lover , '' where Welch blasts out a gospel-soul-style lead vocal over an arrangement that winks at the thudding backbeat of classic Motown . Adele , anyone ? The rock band most forcefully evoked on `` Ceremonials '' is one of the biggest of all time : U2 . Like them , Florence and the Machine are a true band , who channel garage-rock camaraderie into a huge , lashing sound more fit for an Olympian mountain peak than a garage . And like U2 , Florence and the Machine are fronted by a singer with the pipes , and the shamelessness , to pull off the melodrama -- to turn the ridiculous into the sublime . 2011 has been a banner year for left-of-center women rockers , from St. Vincent to Feist to Laura Marling . Those women are boutique stars , as , for the moment , is Florence Welch . But `` Ceremonials '' suggests she could be a rock star , and a big one . The album concludes with the rock-gospel uplift of `` Leave My Body , '' as Welch roars out a vision of transcendence : `` I 'm gon na leave my body/Moving up to higher ground/Lose my mind . '' It 's a big song , with a big , brash , Bono-worthy sentiment . And a voice to match . Copyright © 2011 Rolling Stone .
Florence and the Machine 's second album is as dark , robust and romantic as ever . The music touches on Celtic melodies , bluesy rock stomps , nods to goth and gospel . It has a lot of energy but also some very tender moments that are just beautiful.