Last year, Florence and the Machine rolled out a series of Vincent Haycock-directed music videos behind new album How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful. “Ship to Wreck” saw Florence Welch battling herself and a doomed relationship; “Queen of Peace” pitted her against a bloodthirsty mob; and in “Delilah”, the frontwoman came face to face with a sinister goblin. Welch went on to confront similar challenges in the cinematic clips for “St. Jude”, “What Kind of Man”, and the title track.
Now, all those visual journeys have been collected into a 47-minute short film. Aptly titled The Odyssey, it includes new scenes to thread the videos into a narrative, as well as a new concluding chapter soundtracked by LP track “Third Eye” (all helmed by Haycock again).
In a statement, Welch talked about the “very personal project,” saying:
“This is the finale of a very personal project that came from a conversation me and Vince had in the Chateau Marmont about a year and a half ago while I was writing How Big How Blue How Beautiful. I was talking to him about the record and the car crash of a relationship break up I was going through. The highs and the lows of love and performance, how out of control I felt, the purgatory of heartbreak, and how I was trying to change and trying to be free. And we decided we would re-tell this story in full.”
Haycock, meanwhile, likened it to Homer’s epic:
“The Odyssey, like the epic poem by Homer, is a journey. It’s Florence’s personal journey to find herself again after the emotional storm of a heartbreak. Like the layers of Dante’s purgatory, each song or chapter represents a battle that Florence traversed and physical landscape that embodied each song or story. Its a metaphorical journey about escaping your demons, confronting yourself and returning to the original Florence, the dancer, the performer, the lover.”
Watch the full film over at the band’s official website.
Revisit “Ship to Wreck” below.
