Florence + The Machine - Ceremonials (Australian Limited Edition) (2012)

On her band's second album, it can feel like Florence Welch is simply holding out a single note at top volume for an hour. Instead of Lungs' charming, discombobulating diversity, Ceremonials suffers from repetitiveness. The few tracks that do deviate from the heaven's-crescendo formula hardly curb frustrations.

When I first saw Florence and the Machine two years ago at New York's cozy and beloved Bowery Ballroom, leader Florence Welch's voice was simply too loud for the room. She sounded massive, but shrill. Overpowering. If the show took place in an X-Men movie, the wind gushing from Welch's lungs would have propelled several patrons smashing through the Bowery's back window onto Delancey Street. The next time I encountered That Voice, it was five months later, in the relatively gigantic Terminal 5 on Manhattan's far west side. And while that venue is often knocked for its booming, detail-abolishing acoustics, and concrete-slab atmosphere, it was a much better fit for Welch, who hopped, ran, and wailed while 3,000 giddy fans looked on, awestruck. For this band and this singer, nothing could be too big. Or so it seemed.

Growing up, Welch was met with stern eyes when she was caught singing her favorite hymns with a bit too much verve. Her unbridled talent is the type of thing producers of TV singing contests fantasize about. It's soulful. It's instant. It's blaring. On "American Idol", contestants like Welch are invariably deemed "quirky" and doomed to runner-up status. And though Welch is a more convincing Artist than even the best "Idol" has to offer, make no mistake that her voice-first delivery is perfectly tailored for a generation who grew up judging singers as much as they listened to them. Even the hopelessly hip crowd that showed up to see Welch at Vice's Creators Project event last month saved one of their biggest ovations for the moment when she held out one piercing note for an exaggerated period of time-- a primal sign of skill that banks on nothing less than sheer audacity.

The same can be said of Florence and the Machine's second album, Ceremonials, which can feel like Welch simply holding out a single note at top volume for an hour. On paper, the album takes a wise path. After trying out a few different producers and styles-- garage-pop; vampy twinkle-pop; and tribal, mystic-pop-- on her debut, Lungs, Welch settles almost exclusively on the latter for Ceremonials, bringing along producer Paul Epworth, who was so good at the mystic stuff on the first record, to oversee the whole thing. So what we get is Florence trying very hard to top the gargantuan drums and cascading harps and chest-thumping choruses of Lungs hits like "Cosmic Love" and "Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up)" on damn near every song. Instead of Lungs' largely charming yet discombobulating diversity, Ceremonials suffers from a repetitiveness that's akin to looking at a skyline filled with 100-story behemoths lined-up one after the other, blocking out everything but their own size.