Florence And The Machine has announced her return to music. “Hunger” will be released this Thursday, May 3, along with its accompanying video directed by A.G. Rojas.
Florence Welch’s new music has been at least three years in the making. Back in 2015, ahead of her last and most successful album How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful, she told Rolling Stone how her then-recent breakup with boyfriend James Nesbitt forced her to “face her own demons,” which led to battles with alcohol abuse. Two years later, Welch told Female First that that period in her life — what she called a “black hole” — directly influenced her fourth album, which is also reported to drop sometime this year. (A 2018 festival announcement only added to such speculation.)
“Hunger” follows this year’s Record Store Day exclusive “Sky Full Of Song.” Prior to that, though, two years had passed since Florence And The Machine contributed “Wish That You Were Here” to Tim Burton’s film Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children. Of course, 2015’s How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful set incredibly high expectations for whatever would follow, especially after it became Florence And The Machine’s first album to top the Billboard 200. “Hunger” also arrives ahead of Welch’s book debut: Useless Magic, a collection of lyrics, poetry and illustrations “providing readers with a unique insight into her creative process,” out July 5. See another teaser for Florence And The Machine’s new music below.
