The Insider's Guide to Flo Rence ; After an Impromptu Performance in a Pub Set Her On the Road to Stardom, Florence Welch has Gone On to Bag a Brit Award, a Mercury Prize Nomination - and Capture the Hearts of a Legion of Fans. Benji Wilson Gets the Story so Far From One of Electric Picnic's Most Colourful - and Unconventional - Headlining Acts Photographs Robert Astley Sparke [Eire Region]

Daily Mail › August 30, 2009

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Summary

M any of the things you need to know about Florence Welch, the flame-haired frontwoman of this year's hottest musical ticket Florence and the Machine, are right there in her stage performances.

Take one of her most recent gigs, for example. Fuelled by a couple of vodka tonics, she twirled and whirled in scandalous hotpants and a floor-length mesh cape, then clambered on to a speaker stack, and perched motionless on top like a pensive bird of prey while the band played on. The thought occurred: uh-oh, she's going to try and fly. Luckily it also occurred to a security guard who hauled her back down. And then the song ended and she was a pleasant, polite 22-year-old again, thanking the crowd so much for coming. 'Singing takes over your whole body and your brain. It's like coming back from a weird place every time you stop,' she tells me when we meet a week later. It's the ability to go to that weird place that makes Florence this year's most off-kilter, downright exhilarating pop star. She looks sensational, her album Lungs has been nominated for this year's Mercury Prize (to be announced on 8 September) and she has a voice loud enough to smash chandeliers from a distance. But most of all she has an eerie presence - 'like Kate Bush on Red Bull', I wrote in my notes at that gig - that makes her seem just a little bit special.

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The Insider's Guide to Flo Rence ; After an Impromptu Performance in a Pub Set Her On the Road to Stardom, Florence Welch has Gone On to Bag a Brit Award, a Mercury Prize Nomination - and Capture the Hearts of a Legion of Fans. Benji Wilson Gets the Story so Far From One of Electric Picnic's Most Colourful - and Unconventional - Headlining Acts Photographs Robert Astley Sparke [Eire Region]

Florence says this fey otherworldliness was there from childhood. She grew up in a bohemian south London family, the eldest of three children born to an ad-man father and an American art historian mother. 'I was imaginative, a bit of a dreamer but quite a timid child. I wasn't confident - I think childhood is one of the most uncertain and terrifying places to be. I don't know if I'd want to go back there. But I do remember being completely involved in imaginary games that would last for days, weeks. It was always magic, sorce...

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