Unbest

Jill Guccini on Florence & the Machine’s Ceremonials (2011)
(iTunes, Rdio, Spotify) 

Ceremonials by Florence & the Machine has been entangled in my brain cells for the last two months in a way an album has not been in a long, long time.

As I grow older I find my experience with music to be increasingly further away from what it was when I was a teen; I listen more to music that I know is “good” music and less to music that I am zealously possessive of, whether it’s considered “good” or not. I used to view my CDs as a bunch of beautiful children; I cradled them and got separation anxiety without them. Basically I was kind of like a crazy person. Then I grew up and learned it’s embarrassing to be so melodramatic.

But for the last two months I have looked forward to any moment in my day when I got to listen to this album again, like I’m excited to see a good friend. During the last hour or two of work, when my brain is almost completely dulled to grey, I remember that I can listen to it on the way home and all my synapses suddenly reawaken. If I were a cartoon, my pupils would be bright stars and Florence Welch’s face would be in the middle of them.

It started when a friend blogged about “Shake It Out.” I went and listened to it. And then I stayed up way past my bedtime just so I could keep listening to it. It felt like the religion I always wanted but never had—joyous and big enough to fill all of my bones. It thrilled me down to my silly little toes and life before I heard it suddenly seemed awfully dull and sad. Bury that horse in the ground, you’re damn right I will. My brain couldn’t process anything other than wanting to listen to this song at all times for at least 48 hours.

Then a good friend sent my girlfriend and I a copy of the rest of the CD a few weeks before its actual release date. And oh dear, “Shake It Out” suddenly almost seemed inconsequential compared to the glory of, well, every other song. The three of us—the friend, my girlfriend and myself—freaked out about the whole thing so much and so often, flailing our fan-girl arms, that when the actual release date came and went and the rest of the world didn’t collapse I was genuinely confused. When a reviewer called the album “good” and when a friend told me that “Shake It Out” was “a good song,” my brain lacked comprehension. My eyes glossed over with confusion. By “good,” do you mean, “!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! CARTWHEEL SOMERSAULT EXULTATION !!!!!!!!!!!”? Because that’s the only feeling that makes sense.

How is this woman not occupying every part of your being right now? I wonder. Who are you people? And then I felt a big sense of relief. Phew! It’s all mine, like I knew it was. The cartwheels are only in my brain and it is okay. Thank god.

Most days all I want to do are tweet lyrics from the album over and over but I restrain myself. One day during a somewhat silly mental breakdown in October, I only had the emotional capacity to listen to “No Light, No Light” over and over as I drove from errand to errand crying in the car because the furor of it was the only thing that made sense. I never knew daylight could be violent. I was all, “RIGHT? RIGHT?!” Sometimes the Florence in my head and I have conversations.

And then there was the transcendent moment of re-falling in love with “Shake It Out.” Such an unexpected and lovely moment—kaboom, there it was again, waiting for me. Oh, my graceless heart. Hard to dance with the devil on your back. Shake it out, shake it out. Glory glory hallelujah.

“I don’t think I’ve ever listened to an album as much as I’ve listened to this one,” my girlfriend said the other day. “Well, maybe that’s not true. Just not in a long time.”

Not in a long time, indeed. Neko Case sings about holding out for that teenage feeling; being illogically in love with a record is that feeling for me, and I should hold out for it. I’m grateful for this reminder.

Jill Guccini is not often so dramatic about things—okay, maybe she is. She writes about stuff she likes here and tweets here.