Florence + the Machine has revealed that her forthcoming fifth studio album, Dance Fever, will be released on 13 May.
The British artist made the announcement on Thursday 10 March, at the same time as releasing a new single, “My Love”, and accompanying video.
Press material states that Dance Fever was recorded predominantly in London during the pandemic, and aims to encapsulate what Florence Welch missed while in lockdown, from clubbing to dancing at festivals.
“It’s the album that brings back the very best of Florence – the festival-headlining Boudicca, wielding anthems like a flaming sword,” a statement says.
“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. The imagery resonated with Florence, who had been touring nonstop for more than a decade, and in lockdown felt oddly prescient.”
Welch produced the album with Jack Antonoff (Taylor Swift, Lorde, Haim, Lana Del Rey) and Glass Animals frontman Dave Bayley. It includes influences from “the tragic heroines of pre-Raphaelite art, the gothic fiction of Carmen Maria Machado and Julia Armfield, the visceral wave of folk horror films from The Wicker Man and The Witch to Midsommar”.
“Dance Fever is an album that sees Florence at the peak of her powers, coming into a fully realised self-knowledge, poking sly fun at her own self-created persona, playing with ideas of identity, masculine and feminine, redemptive, celebratory, stepping fully into her place in the iconic pantheon,” the statement added.
“My Love” is released after earlier singles “King” and “Heaven is Here”.
The music video for “Heaven is Here” was filmed in Kyiv just weeks before the Russian invasion. Upon releasing it, Welch sent a message to the video’s “brave” dancers sheltering in Ukraine.
