Coachella Photos & Recap: Florence & The Machine Bring Ethereal Power to the Desert

By Johnny Firecloud

The Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival has wrapped its Weekend One events, rounding the final bend with a magnificent performance of ethereally powerful goodness from Florence and the Machine, who upgraded to main-stage placement for their headliner-penultimate set. Frontwoman Florence Welch, bounding about the stage in a white pantsuit, delivered a vocally incredible performance supplemented in no small part by a rapturous light show, backup singers and an all-female horn section.

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Leading with the cinematically magical “What The Water Gave Me,” Welch’s vivacity carried the crowd’s enthusiasm through far less familiar but no less promising new material, from their forthcoming third album, How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful. The slow-build forest fire of “What Kind of Man” found her belting heartbreak face-to-face with fans, and sailing through “Ship To Wreck” as if it were a live-staple anthem hit. When introducing the latter, Welch mused: “It’s about some time off I had in London when I had some drunken parties and trashed my house and said a drunken ‘I love you’ too soon. Even thought all that disastrous stuff happened I got this song out of it.”

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When Florence Welch asks you to take off your clothes, well hell, you at least think about it. So thousands obliged when she asked the crowd to remove one item of clothing and swing it over their heads during the final song, “Dog Days Are Over”. Welch then removed her own shirt, performing the rest of the track wearing just her bra. “Embrace each other, get weird with it, touch each other’s faces!” If you say so!

Coachella 2015: Florence & The Machine

Johnny Firecloud
Johnny Firecloud

Senior Writer

A senior writer at CraveOnline since 2006, Johnny has reported on music culture around the world for over a decade while setting a higher standard of reviews, editorials, photography and interviews with the industry's biggest names. Johnny has conceptualized and produced a wide range of original Crave features such as the long-running Band of The Month series, the CraveOnstage performance feature, the Music History video series and the Passport travel colum, among others. His Crave coverage spectrum has included Lifestyle, Travel, Film & TV, Politics, Sports, Fashion and Food writing.

A jack of all journalistic trades & master of several, you can also find his work on Antiquiet, Filter, Food Republic, Media Roots, The Owl Mag and beyond. His music photos can be seen on Instagram. Keep up with Johnny on Twitter at @JohnnyFirecloud, and on Facebook.

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