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Music

Florence Welch Brings Her Big Voice to a Tiny Desk Concert

Florence + The Machine played "June," "Patricia," and "Ship to Wreck" at NPR in an impressively restrained set.
Florence and the Machine Tiny Desk Concert

Florence + The Machine's fourth studio album, High As Hope, was only kept off the top of the Billboard 200 over the summer by Drake's inevitable chart-topper, Scorpion. It was Florence Welch's third consecutive top-10 record in the US and her fourth consecutive in the UK. She is a global star now, propelled by a massive, immediately recognizable voice and a set of songs that push all of that drama to the fore.

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Her first Tiny Desk concert, then, was always going to be a bit of a challenge: no booming drums, no special effects, no space to run around. She did have longtime Florence + The Machine harpist Tom Monger to her right, so she wasn't completely bereft of extra flourishes, but it was still an impressively restrained set on its own terms. She played "June" and "Patricia" from High As Hope before closing with the How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful single, "Ship to Wreck." Watch it all over at NPR.

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