Florence + the Machine Soldier Through Rain and Power Outages to Close Out ‘Dance Fever’ Tour at Hollywood Bowl: Concert Review
About 20 minutes past Florence + the Machine’s slated start time for their headlining set at the Hollywood Bowl on Saturday, most of the venue was still pitch black from a venue-wide power outage.
The crowd’s anxiety mounted as many wondered whether the show would still happen — until the stage’s two display screens suddenly rebooted and the Bowl’s lights blared back on. Fans, many wearing flower crowns to match Welch’s mystical aesthetic, roared in thunderous applause at the sight of a Windows login screen — as if Florence herself had stepped onto center stage, and Welch and the group masterfully channeled the chaos into a night to remember.
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Clad in a glimmering regal dress, Welch opened the 90-minute performance with the “Dance Fever” scene-setter “Heaven is Here” before transitioning into the album’s opener “King,” with the latter’s wailing outro serving as an early-set display of her immense vocal ability. She showcased her impressive long notes and skillful control of tone at multiple moments throughout the night, but it wasn’t all about flaunting her vocal prowess. She rallied the crowd with high-energy tracks like “Ship to Wreck,” the Jack Antonoff-produced “Free” and her career-defining megahit “Dog Days Are Over.”
Before the frenzied final drop of “Dog Days,” Welch took a few minutes to welcome the crowd to the final stop of her U.S. “Dance Fever” tour, acknowledging that the power outage had almost caused the cancelation of the show before cracking some lighthearted self-referential jokes about her shows.
“To anyone out there who may have just been brought along, and you’re wondering: ‘What the fuck is this? Is this a show, or is it a cult? Is it a haunted house experience, or is it a British pagan dance ritual?,'” she joked before imploring the audience to put their phones away, “give in” to the music and dance the night away with her.
And perhaps the biggest highlight of the night was Welch’s rebellious desire to break convention and become one with the crowd. The gloomy Los Angeles weather came to a head during her set as light rain started to pour onto the open-faced Hollywood Bowl, and what had been Welch’s tour ritual of running into the crowd and performing a couple of songs away from the main stage was suddenly not allowed due to fear of slippage (she performed barefoot). She took a minute to check with people backstage and initially told the crowd she wasn’t allowed to come down until the rain subsided, but the roaring rock and roll nature of “What Kind of Man” found Welch running around the pit and lower garden levels of the Bowl anyway.
Upon her return to the stage, she chuckled a sly “Whoops!” to rapturous applause.
Later in the set, she ran even higher up the bleachers during “Choreomania” as the rain poured down even harder. Standing on a platform with adoring fans all around her, Welch raised her hands in time with the song’s big drop in a picture-perfect moment before running down back to the stage to continue her set.
But even without running-into-the-crowd moments, Welch remains a kinetic performer, with movements are so visceral and theatrical that it’s difficult to look away. And during the slower songs like “June,” she explained the stories and inspiration behind them in an equally immersive way.
Closing out the night with the disco-pop anthem “My Love” before coming back out to do an encore that included “Never Let Me Go” and “Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up),” Welch showed the Hollywood Bowl that music and determination (and a little help from technology) can overcome a power shortage and a rain storm.
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