The Ache, The Kick, The Knee

Florence and the Machine “Witch Dance”

“Witch Dance” was written about Florence Welch’s experience of nearly dying as a result of an ectopic pregnancy. “The closest I came to death was trying to make life, and you don’t get that without desire,” she told Zane Lowe on Apple Music. The song tangles sex and death into knots, starting with an opening scene in which she’s fucking the personification of death, whose “blackberry mouth” tastes like life. Welch has been exploring themes of desire, faith, and nature through her entire career but she’s rarely been so lascivious and primal. The lyrics play out like a dark fairytale, but she keeps the song grounded in equal measures of lust and loss, buzzing with a profound connection to the cycle of life.

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Water From Your Eyes “Life Signs”

There’s a touch of Fugazi in the opening bit of “Life Signs,” which is mostly notable to me in how rarely I hear any band approach a Fugazi-type groove. The song shifts gears pretty quickly and keeps moving from there, creating a restless and gnarly backdrop for Rachel Brown’s monotone monologue. It’s the perfect sound for itchy lyrics about feeling uncomfortable and out of place in nearly any setting – “I’m unfulfilled, I’m in a beautiful place, yeah, it’s so sad in this beautiful place.” Brown reaches for sung higher notes on the chorus hook, but only gets so high, as though they hit a ceiling for their feeling a bit too soon.

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