Off the record: Let’s go with the Flo

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Hot tip for 2009: Flo Welch, once tagged as the new Kate Nash, is now set for stardom in her own right

The next time you talk to me, you'll have to go through my people',” 21-year-old art school dropout Flo Welch tells me. She's joking, but the Camberwell singer, who goes by the unlikely stage name Florence and the Machine, is all too aware that major fame is now a near inevitability. A sizeable entourage and tiny dog in a handbag are only a matter of time.

No tips for 2009 list will be complete without this gangly redhead, whose floral dresses and overwhelming kookiness first started a record label signing scrum a year ago, when everybody was hunting for the next Kate Nash. The problem was, she didn't have many songs and those she did have were significantly darker than Nash's faux-cockney chirpiness.

Her acoustic ballad, Girl With 1 Eye, features the charming couplet: “I took a knife and cut out her eye/I took it home and watched it wither and die”. A punky early single, Kiss With a Fist, controversially depicted an intense love affair in the language of domestic violence.

Though both tracks were united by Welch's extraordinary voice — a throaty holler that recalls Grace Slick of Sixties hippies Jefferson Airplane — the difference between them indicated that in the early days she had no idea what to sound like. “I used to make 10-minute songs about stationery and dead swans,” she says. “I felt like a bit of a fraud when the record companies were taking me out for dinner. I didn't actually know what I could offer them, and I felt they had a certain idea of what they wanted me to be.”

Now, thankfully, things are rather more focused. This week she'll finally sign on the dotted line with Island, home of Keane and the Sugababes. “It eventually happened more naturally. It's great because they've signed me for what I am rather than what I might become.” On 24 November, she releases a new single, Dog Days, that is an Olympic standard triple jump ahead of what has come before.

Produced by man-of-the-hour James Ford, known for his work with Arctic Monkeys and Klaxons, it's a riot of harp, handclaps and thunderous drums that has enough fast bits and slow bits to show off the full range of that mighty voice. It sounds very much like her first hit. “It's definitely a big sound. I don't think it's more commercial, it's just got a bit more air around it.” It's backed by an equally strident cover of the Candi Staton classic You've Got the Love.

Her debut album is now due in spring, though an early taste can be had at her biggest London headline show to date, at the Bush Hall on Thursday. She is promising her own choir and an army of “scary clowns” on stage.

It's reassuring to know that on her way to stardom, the weirdness hasn't entirely been extinguished.

NEW ON THE NET

* Dido has been away so long it's easy to forget that her previous albums are two of the top four biggest sellers of the 21st century. Softly swaying comeback single Don't Believe In Love is another certain hit and will arrive in download stores on Monday.

* A huge amount of new downloadable music has just hit the web now that major label Universal has launched http://losttunes.com, an online store dedicated to obscure rarities. On 3 November it will see Paul Weller making all his BBC Sessions available to download at once — more than enough Modfather for anyone.

* Audiophiles who fret that the sound quality of downloads is inferior should head over to www.hdtracks.com, where songs come as “lossless” files that are claimed to be even crisper than on CD. Gibson Guitars are currently funding a generous taster at the site, 14 free tracks by guitar whizzes including Slash and Johnny Winter.

 

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