Today (July 3) marks the ten-year anniversary of the release of Lungs, the debut album from Florence And The Machine. The record of course featured Florence Welch’s breakout single “Dog Days Are Over,” which remains her highest-charting single in the US, with a peak of No. 21 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.
To mark the anniversary, Welch has announced that she will be re-releasing the album with a bunch of extra material, most notably including two previously-unheard demos: “My Best Dress” and “Donkey Kosh.” The former features Welch’s idiosyncratically emotive vocals and acoustic guitar instrumentation before the rest of the band works their way in, while the latter seems less developed, as it’s a midtempo voice-and-guitar song that sounds like it’s a few instruments away from being in a final form. Both songs are available to listen to now.
In a 2008 interview, shortly after “Dog Days Are Over” was released as a single in early December, Welch spoke about the track, saying, “It was just a song that I did at my friend’s studio in Crystal Palace [in south London]. We didn’t have any instruments and we were in a studio the size of a loo. All the drums were done by like banging on walls and endless vocal tracks tuned into this big screaming mess. The journey from Crystal Palace to the ears of someone on the motorway or another city… it’s strange.”
The special edition comes out on August 16. In the meantime, listen to “My Best Dress” and “Donkey Kosh” above, and check out the Lungs rerelease tracklist below.
1. “Dog Days Are Over”
2. “Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up)”
3. “I’m Not Calling You A Liar”
4. “Howl”
5. “Kiss With A Fist”
6. “Girl With One Eye”
7. “Drumming Song”
8. “Between Two Lungs”
9. “Cosmic Love”
10. “My Boy Builds Coffins”
11. “Hurricane Drunk”
12. “Blinding”
13. “You’ve Got The Love”
14. “Bird Song”
15. “My Boy Builds Coffins (Acoustic)”
16. “My Best Dress (Demo)”
17. “Donkey Kosh (Demo)”
18. “Hospital Beds”
19. “Falling”
20. “Ghosts (Demo)”
21. “Postcards from Italy (Demo)”
22. “Swimming”
23. “Are You Hurting The One You Love?”
24. “Oh! Darling (Live at Abbey Road)”
The Lungs rerelease is out 08/16. Pre-order it here.
