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Oct 9, 2012Ceremonials is gorgeous head-to-toe, making grand statements with heavy syntax, but paradoxically, it's light as air.
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Mar 22, 2012It's this robust fervor and subject matter that fire up and lift up many of the songs on Ceremonials, but the constant exhortation comes at a price. Listener fatigue sets in as the relentless, up-tempo pace and sharply exclamatory vocal tone overwhelms over the course of the album.
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MojoJan 10, 2012For all the florid curlicues and crescendos, Welch's second album is light on true beauty, real idiosyncrasy. [Dec. 2011, p.94]
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Q MagazineDec 13, 2011Ceremonials is quite some achievement: an accomplished pop record infused with intelligence and imagination... It offers the final, conclusive evidence that she's a pop star to believe in. [Dec. 2011 p. 118]
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Nov 29, 2011As one of the last big album releases to close out 2011, it's highly fitting that Ceremonials should be considered perhaps the most beautiful and absorbing of them all.
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Nov 29, 2011Ceremonials is a sumptuously produced album of mystic pop anthems.
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UncutNov 11, 2011The result is exhausting, an album of songs that all want to be showstoppers. [Dec 2011, p.86]
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Nov 11, 2011An ambitious LP like is, backlit by harmonies and dramatic chord changes, is the perfect vehicle to showcase her voice; a less talented vocalist would crumble under its heaviness.
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Nov 7, 2011In making the songs so monumental, Florence and the Machine have also made them impersonal.
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Nov 7, 2011What's offered on Ceremonials is solid, even a cut or two above solid. But it doesn't move the band forward.
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Nov 4, 2011Ceremonials is truly one of the few recent pop LPs that works both as a collection of individual songs and as a true album, with the right balance and flow to keep the record captivating from start to finish.
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Nov 4, 2011Florence and the Machine's second album is certainly a move in the right direction.
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Nov 3, 2011Like Mickey Mouse conducting the ocean in Fantasia, she often seems more a celestial vessel for the heady energy and abstract imagery than a relatable character--a balance she doesn't always strike.
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Nov 3, 2011Overall, Ceremonials leaves everyone's opinions of Florence + the Machine in stasis; if you loved or hated her before, you'll still feel the same way, if you were unsure, you'll still be unsure.
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Nov 3, 2011Instead 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.
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Nov 2, 2011For a while, it's promising: "Only If for a Night" pits Welch's soulful-and-strange vocal gymnastics against a firecracker beat and a gang of chorus chanters. But elsewhere, Ceremonials feels drained of personality.
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Nov 2, 2011Ceremonials abandons so many of the musical avenues she mapped out on Lungs and focuses instead on a monolithic sound that is certainly affecting but is becoming increasingly conventional in 2011.
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Nov 1, 2011Welch offers a sumptuous, energizing experience that runs the gamut from ecstasy to fury and favorably evokes forebears like Annie Lennox and Sinead O'Connor and current peers like Adele.
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Nov 1, 2011As a second album, it is perfectly acceptable and there are many aspects of it to admire. But the static present on much of Ceremonials cannot quantify the record as anything but a regression in broader terms.
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Nov 1, 2011She's found a way to honor her Bjorkian appetites for lavish orchestral spectacle while finding the depth and subtlety of her voice.
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Nov 1, 2011Ceremonials is Welch barreling off a cliff on wings made of dear-diary sentiment, art-school theatrics, and pure-cut sincerity, and somehow, against all odds, she manages to soar.
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Nov 1, 2011As it stands, the best that could be said about Ceremonials is that it's a pleasant enough listen that will change absolutely nobody's mind about Florence and her machine.
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Nov 1, 2011As polished and artistically challenging as that first effort was, this latest outing gets the most out of Welch's strengths as a songwriter by shooting for a higher degree of difficulty and achieving a greater level of proficiency.
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Nov 1, 2011Florence and the Machine's second album is as dark, robust and romantic as ever, but a revving 18-wheeler is no longer the apt metaphor for Welch's voice.
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Oct 31, 2011[A] rare sophomore outing that not only manages to avoid the slump, but bests its predecessor in the process.
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Oct 31, 2011By taking what worked about Lungs and amplifying those qualities to a natural, satisfying conclusion, Florence has made a near-great pop record that should afford her the creative freedom to do whatever the hell she wants next time around. She may be away with the faeries, but she knows exactly what she's doing.
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Oct 31, 2011The first four tracks of Ceremonials are essentially flawless....Ceremonials can't help but get weaker as it continues, a fact which owes less to the quality of the songwriting than to the album's length (it's over an hour long) and a far less dynamic second act.
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Oct 31, 2011Ceremonials never comes down off the high precipice.
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Oct 28, 2011She crafts Ceremonials, a confident, unflinching tour de force.
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Oct 28, 2011It's bigger, brighter and braver than what went before, and should elevate Florence even higher, with her Machine shoulder to shoulder.
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Oct 28, 2011She really does sweep the listener away, spinning wild webs of sound and carrying us off to her own aural dreamland.
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Oct 28, 2011But in cementing one style, some of the possibilities offered by Lungs have been choked off.
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Oct 27, 2011Welch may never do anything as dangerous and uncouth as "Kiss" ever again. But even the threat of menace works wonders on terrific follow-up Ceremonials.
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Oct 27, 2011This is all grandeur without any grace.
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Oct 27, 2011The only real criticism of Ceremonials is that this album is completely, relentlessly, Florence. Her fans will lap it up, while those who aren't keen on her will probably remain unconvinced.
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Oct 27, 2011Ceremonials always sounds wonderful--producer Paul Epworth has created a warm, soft, four-poster featherbed of sound for Welch to emote over--but it never really satisfies.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 541 out of 585
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Mixed: 13 out of 585
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Negative: 31 out of 585
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Nov 1, 2011
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Nov 1, 2011
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Nov 15, 2011