Florence + the Machine have released a spellbinding live performance of “Morning Elvis,” the final track on the band’s 2022 album, Dance Fever. For the song, frontwoman Florence Welch recruited the help of Southern Gothic siren Ethel Cain, who joined her on stage during the band’s Ball Arena show in Denver, Colorado, earlier this year.
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Looking back on the October performance, Cain further revealed details of their collaboration. “I was giggling when we rehearsed the song just the two of us before the show because Florence told me that ‘Morning Elvis’ was her channeling her inner Southern rocker, and I told her I couldn’t stop myself from emulating her British accent on certain words,” Cain in a statement. “It felt like a holy convergence happening in a basketball arena.
“Florence’s dressing room smelled like powder and sage and we were both dressed in white, singing our lines back and forth to each other, and I felt like I was back in choir practice, but with an actual angel this time,” she continued. “She’s never not smiling, and if you would have told me we were the only two people in the entire venue while we sang it in the middle of her set, I would have believed you.”
Listen to their enchanting on-stage rendition of “Morning Elvis,” below.
Cain made her debut in May with the album, Preacher’s Daughter, a release that has topped many year-end lists. Florence + the Machine’s Dance Fever also dropped in May with a surprise live album that followed in October.
“For an album that was so much about performance, the possession of it, the love-hate relationship with life on the road. And the ensuing grief when I thought it may never happen again. To get out to perform these songs has been the most extraordinary experience,” Welch said in a statement upon the live album’s release. “The connection with the audience and the catharsis is at a level I have never experienced before.
“Maybe it’s because we all missed it so much,” she continued. “But people are bringing so much of themselves to these shows, I wanted to have a memory of ‘Dance Fever’ live. As a testament to this time, and a full circle moment. For an album so much about the loss of live music. To have a recording of the return means so much to me.”
Photo by Autumn de Wilde // Courtesy Sacks & Co.
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