The reason people like me hate bands like U2 and Colplay is because their outsized sounds and visions are the antitheses of rock and roll.Rock And Roll is being sounds playing the biggest of feelings on the smallest of stages. The "I'm against it" at the heart of rock and roll hits hard against the "I am bigger than it" of the largest, somewhat manipulative , over emotionalism of a Bono. Presley didn't bellow, didn't grab us, to make his point. His point was made for him in his persona and his hillbilly charm subsumed by a teen disregard for falseness of all types (though especially sexual).
Now here's the exception.
A woman because of the manipulated nature of her sex, can battle through the hypocrisy of big rock and roll and remain both true and bigger than life. At least on her sophomore album, certainly one of the best albums of the year, Ceremonials,Welch manages to. Around a handful of crushingly great pop songs, Welch makes heavily orchestrated symphonic based rock and digs in deep to transcend herself and her songs. It is a way magnificent thing.
The three pop songs, "Shake It Up", "Break It Down", and "All This And Heaven Too" are surrounded by song after song that echoes Kate Bush at her best only with better vocals and more sweeping sounds: it is an organic liquidity at odds with its ruthless professionalism. Not unlike her live on stage persona: it is a free floating coolness with a lyric persuasion that echoes Emily Bronte (one of the greatest poets imaginable).
Bronte dealt with an aloneness deadzone whereas Welch's dead zone seems to include other people: it seems settled into the Yorkshire Moors, and it has an Anglo centric central set in a timeless place: here is the dichotomy of Ceremonial: Welch's wateryness and the male (like the Moors) cragly stone: soft/hard and she traverses both sides to enormous effect.
A song as good as "Leave My Body" with its spiritual imperfections heads forwards and backwards, the ceremonies feel religious but the religion is desire. I've mentioned Kate Bush but here is another name: PJ Harvey: this is a relation of To Bring You My Love without the blues and without the guitars.
Grade: A