The dog days are decidedly over in “Queen of Peace/Long & Lost,” the new double-feature video from London indie pop-rock megastars Florence and the Machine. The nearly 10 minute mini-movie is a gorgeous ode to the Scots countryside (director Vincent Haycock filmed it on the isle of Easdale), but its emotional frequency is less ode and more lament. Florence Welch, the band’s striking front woman, makes full use of her ethereal mythos in the video’s epic narrative, playing both victim and healer to a group hell-bent on violence and destruction.
Welch has the capacity for big, booming pop songs, and “Queen of Peace” does have a horn section set to 11, but her singing is remarkably reserved, only opening up in glimpses during the song’s emotional chorus. The high drama and striking visuals of the video at least match, if not surpass, both vocals and instrumentation in intensity.
The transition to the far quieter of the two singles, “Long & Lost,” is as melancholy and natural as the corresponding arrival of night in the video’s narrative. The final image of a mourning, desolate on a silent dock, is telling as both an epic story’s resolution and as an abstract portrayal of Welch as an artist, digging deeper and reaching harder than she ever has in this strange and wondrous performance.
Florence Welch ramps up the melodrama in “Queen of Peace/Long & Lost,” a 10-minute short film paired to two tracks from her recent LP, How Big How Blue How Beautiful. the singer exploring weighty themes – loss of innocence, male brutality, familial struggle – against the wind-swept backdrop of Scottish isle Easdale.
In “Queen of Peace,” Welch and her younger self roam around the countryside, lamenting at the feet of violent men. “Suddenly I’m overcome, dissolving like the setting sun,” the singer belts on the surging chorus. “Like a boat into oblivion, ’cause you’re driving me away.” In “Long & Lost,” the clip’s brooding counterpart, the Welches drift on a river as a storm threatens the night sky. “Lost in the fog, these hollow hills,” she sings with her trademark flair. “Blood running hot, night chills / Without your love.”
“The end of the video was done in a single take, at the very last seconds of light during a stormy barge ride on a freezing sea,” Haycock says in a statement. “The effort and focus on both the actors and crew was so amazing. Florence delivers one of my favorite moments to date, and it’s one of my proudest technical and narrative accomplishments.”
Haycock has previously collaborated with Florence Welch on four videos from her recent LP, helming clips for “How Big How Blue How Beautiful,” “What Kind of Man,” “St. Jude” and “Ship to Wreck.”
Last month, Florence and the Machine were promoted to Friday night headliners at the Glastonbury Festival after a cancellation from Foo Fighters..
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