Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-x4r87 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-26T18:02:17.228Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

‘Conjuring some magic’: paganism and the musical and visual aesthetics of Florence + the Machine and Bat for Lashes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 January 2019

Erin Sweeney Smith
Erin Sweeney Smith*
Affiliation:
Independent Scholar, Willowick, OH, USA E-mail: ers94@case.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Magic and mystery shroud Florence + the Machine's and Bat for Lashes's performances and interviews, which frequently frame the two groups’ frontwomen, Florence Welch and Natasha Khan, as ‘witchy’ or magical, or spur comparisons to Pagan aesthetics. This article investigates the unique ways the two bands use Pagan influences to speak to mainstream and Pagan audiences. Ultimately, the two groups set themselves apart from other bands through marketing that fuses commercialism with an esoteric religion. Florence + the Machine and Bat for Lashes create a ‘Pagan chic’ that draws in listeners through videos, instrumentation often featuring harp and tom-tom drums, fantasy-oriented lyrics, and stage props which use a Pagan lens to respond to current political events reminiscent of the counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s.

Type
Articles
Information
Popular Music , Volume 38 , Special Issue 1: Music and Magic , January 2019 , pp. 90 - 104
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

References

Adler, M. 1979. Drawing Down the Moon: Witches, Druids, Goddess-Worshippers and Other Pagans in America (New York, Penguin; republished 1986 and 2006)Google Scholar
Anonymous. 2006. ‘Natasha Khan: Mystery and Magic’. http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/natasha-khan-mystery-and-magic-426447.html (accessed 9 January 2018)Google Scholar
Anonymous. 2016. ‘Music artists who have very pagan sounding songs’. https://www.reddit.com/r/Wicca/comments/3z5y6g/music_artists_who_have_verypagan_sounding_songs/#bottom-comments (accessed 9 January 2018)Google Scholar
Bakhtin, M. 1981. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, ed. Holquist, M., trans. Emerson, C. and Holquist, M. (Austin, TX, University of Texas Press)Google Scholar
BBC. 2009. ‘UK jobless total climbs to 2.4m’. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8046128.stm (accessed 9 January 2018)Google Scholar
Bennett, A. 2013 ‘Paganism and the counter-culture’, in Pop Pagans: Paganism and Popular Music, ed. Weston, D. and Bennett, A. (Durham, Acumen), pp. 13–23Google Scholar
Berger, H.A., Leach, E.A., and Shaffer, L.S. 2003. Voices from the Pagan Census: A National Survey of Witches and Neo-Pagans in the United States (Columbia, SC, University of South Carolina Press)Google Scholar
Bramwell, P. 2009. Pagan Themes in Modern Children's Fiction: Green Man, Shamanism, Earth Mysteries (New York, Palgrave Macmillan)Google Scholar
Burrows, T. 2009. ‘Bat For Lashes: Off the Wall’. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/4787192/Bat-for-Lashes-off-the-wall.html (accessed 9 January 2018)Google Scholar
Cunningham, S. 1989. Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner (Woodbury, MN, Llewellyn Press)Google Scholar
Curtin, A. 2014. ‘Vibration, percussion, and primitivism in avant-garde performance’, in Vibratory Modernism, ed. Enns, A. and Trower, S. (Houndmills, Palgrave Macmillan), pp. 227–47Google Scholar
Foltz, T. 2005. ‘The commodification of witchcraft’, in Witchcraft and Magic: Contemporary North America, ed. Berger, H. (Philadelphia, PA, University of Pennsylvania Press), pp. 137–68Google Scholar
Fowkes, K. A. 2010. The Fantasy Film (Malden, MA, Wiley-Blackwell)Google Scholar
Fox, S. 2006. ‘I am a pagan’, in Between the Worlds: Readings in Contemporary Neopaganism, ed. Reid, S. (Toronto, Canadian Scholars’ Press), pp. 25–8Google Scholar
Frizzell, N. 2009. ‘How pop went pagan’. https://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2009/sep/28/pop-pagan (accessed 9 January 2018)Google Scholar
Grigoriadis, V. 2011. ‘Florence Welch, the good witch’. http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/florence-welch-the-good-witch-20111124 (accessed 9 January 2018)Google Scholar
Harvey, G. 2006. ‘Druidry’, in Between the Worlds: Readings in Contemporary Neopaganism, ed. Reid, S. (Toronto, Canadian Scholars’ Press), pp. 115–38Google Scholar
Hogan, M. 2009. ‘Bat for Lashes’. http://pitchfork.com/features/interview/7658-bat-for-lashes/ (accessed 9 January 2018)Google Scholar
Jones, P., and Matthews, C. 1990. ‘Introduction: the pagan world’, in Voices from the Circle: The Heritage of Western Paganism, ed. Jones, P. and Matthews, C. (Wellingborough, The Aquarian Press), pp. 13–40Google Scholar
Lewis, J. 1996. Magical Religion and Modern Witchcraft (Albany, NY, State University of New York)Google Scholar
Lloyd, K. 2016. ‘Going with the Flo’, Time Out London, 2383, pp. 22–5Google Scholar
Luhrmann, T.M. 1989. Persuasions of the Witch's Craft: Ritual Magic and Witchcraft in Present-Day England (Oxford, Basil Blackwell)Google Scholar
Magliocco, S. 2004. Witching Culture: Folklore and Neo-Paganism in America (Philadelphia, PA, University of Pennsylvania Press)Google Scholar
metrowebukmetro. 2009. ‘Bat For Lashes Casts Her Spell’ Metro News. http://metro.co.uk/2009/03/27/bat-for-lashes-casts-her-spell-588716/ (accessed 9 January 2018)Google Scholar
Monroe, J. 2015. ‘Bat For Lashes discusses debut Sexwitch album, shares “Helelyos”’. http://pitchfork.com/news/60902-bat-for-lashes-discusses-debut-sexwitch-album-shares-helelyos/ (accessed 9 January 2018)Google Scholar
nogoldenapples. 2015. ‘Seconding “Rabbit Heart,” which is on my Ostara playlist’. https://www.reddit.com/r/Wicca/comments/2dhaz0/pagan_music_recommendation_thread/ (accessed 9 January 2018)Google Scholar
Portblack. 2015. ‘Rabbit Heart by Florence & The Machine and Nuah by The Kennedy's’. https://www.reddit.com/r/Wicca/comments/2dhaz0/pagan_music_recommendation_thread/ (accessed 9 January 2018)Google Scholar
Ryan, F. 2009. ‘Florence and the Machine interview: sound and vision’. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/rockandpopfeatures/5443013/Florence-and-the-Machine-interview-sound-and-vision.html (accessed 9 January 2018)Google Scholar
Sage, V. 2009. ‘Encountering the wilderness, encountering the mist: nature, romanticism, and contemporary paganism’, Anthropology of Consciousness, 20/1, pp. 27–52Google Scholar
Sempruch, J. 2008. Fantasies of Gender and the Witch in Feminist Theory and Literature (West Lafayette, IN, Purdue University Press)Google Scholar
Singh., A. 2009 ‘New Bat For Lashes “Sleep Alone” (Van Rivers & the Subliminal Kid Remix) (Stereogum Premiere)’. http://www.stereogum.com/83071/new_bat_for_lashes_-_sleep_alone_van_rivers_the_su/mp3sGoogle Scholar
Smith, M. 2015. ‘“Drumming is my madness”: the primitive in mid-late 1960s drumming’, paper delivered at the International Association for the Study of Popular Music, USAGoogle Scholar
Starhawk., 1979. The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess (New York, HarperCollins)Google Scholar
Starhawk, . 1989. The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess, 2nd edn (New York, HarperCollins)Google Scholar
Tellmarrën, E. 2014. Music Magic(k) – A Guide (Lexington, KY, Druim Odhran)Google Scholar
Urban, H. 2006. Magia Sexualis: Sex, Magic, and Liberation in Modern Western Esotericism (Oakland, CA, University of California Press)Google Scholar
Welch, F. 2018. Useless Magic (New York, Crown Archetype)Google Scholar
Weinstein, D. 2013. ‘Pagan metal’, in Pop Pagans: Paganism and Popular Music, ed. Weston, D. and Bennett, A. (Durham, Acumen), pp. 58–75Google Scholar
Weston, D. 2017. ‘Paganism and popular music’, in The Bloomsbury Handbook of Religion and Popular Music, ed. Partridge, C. and Moberg, M. (London: Bloomsbury), pp. 184–97Google Scholar
Weston, D., and Bennett, A. 2013. ‘Towards a definition of Pagan music’, in Pop Pagans: Paganism and Popular Music, ed. Weston, D. and Bennett, A. (Durham, Acumen), pp. 1–12Google Scholar
Wiseman, E. 2018. ‘Florence Welch: “I wonder sometimes, did i dream too big?”’ https://www.theguardian.com/global/2018/jun/24/florence-welch-interview-i-wonder-sometimes-did-i-dream-too-bigGoogle Scholar

Discography

Bat for Lashes, Fur and Gold. Parlophone. 2007Google Scholar
Bat for Lashes, Two Suns. Parlophone. 2009Google Scholar
Florence + the Machine, Ceremonials. Republic. 2011Google Scholar
Florence + the Machine, Lungs. Universal Republic. 2009Google Scholar

Videography

Florence + the Machine, ‘Dog Days are Over (2010 Version)’Google Scholar
Florence + the Machine, ‘No Light No Light’Google Scholar