In a tease far more seductive and frustrating than anything we’ll see in a pseudo-bondage blockbuster movie over the upcoming Valentine’s Day weekend, Florence + the Machine gave us a taste — just a taste — of new music earlier this week. Today, we got a bit more, and it’s nothing short of full frontal awesome.
Florence Welch and company released “What Kind Of Man,” the dramatic single — complete with dramatic video — that’s the first bit of new music from the UK pop-forward group’s new album, How Big How Blue How Beautiful. The follow-up LP to 2011’s Ceremonials drops stateside June 2 via Republic and a day earlier in the UK on Island Records.
The video for “What Kind of Man” was directed by Vincent Haycock and choreographed by Ryan Heffington, and has a bit of an early-’90s vibe to it. It’s also got some nudity.
Speaking of the new record in a press release, Welch says: “I guess although I’ve always dealt in fantasy and metaphor when I came to writing, that meant the songs this time were dealing much more in reality. Ceremonials was so fixated on death and water, and the idea of escape or transcendence through death, but the new album became about trying to learn how live, and how to love in the world rather than trying to escape from it. Which is frightening because I’m not hiding behind anything but it felt like something I had to do.”
Summer of Flo begins now.