Toronto – It’s been a year since I last saw Florence & The Machine. In the 367 days since I last saw the Brit singer, she has managed to cross over to North America and has undergone a massive spike in popularity (including a very awesome MTV VMA performance), all thanks to her stellar debut album, Lungs. As a result, she was no longer playing small size venues such as the Mod Club and has moved on to larger and more cavernous venues, such as the much dreaded Sound Academy.

Since everyone complains thoroughly about the Sound Academy, I’ll skip that portion of the article. Florence & The Machine played a stellar set consisting of material off her album Lungs and a new song, which predictably, fell flat with the crowd. The rest of the songs were impressive in it’s own right, due to Florence’s powerful voice. The five piece band, which included a harpist, elected to play their music in a backgroundish kind of way, never really standing out and often sounding exactly like on album. This allowed Florence to unleash her voice onto the crowd and what can you say, the girl can sing.

I found the choice of set list to be interesting as the first 45 minutes of the show was dedicated to the slower, more melodic parts of the album Lungs, or as I’d like to call it, the non-singles. Since the album has a similar theme to it, some of the tunes started to sound samey after awhile. The slow pacing seemed to have put the crowd in a placid kind of state and when the singles (Kiss with a Fist, Dog Days are Over) started being played, it seemed to be a little too late to get an all out party going, despites Florences best effort. Either that or the crowd was so packed in at the Sound Academy, they couldn’t afford to move. I am not sure but after witnessing a semi mosh pit at the Mod Club show last year, I was surprised to see not much movement in the crowd for their hits.

Let’s now talk about the music. For some reason, whenever I listen to the album Lungs and also when I was at the show, some aspect of her songs – whether it be the tribal drumming, the harp or just random lyrics about the sun and the moon, makes me want to grab a walking stick, fly to Arizona or Nevada or Utah, go on a long as hike, set up a campfire, smoke some peyote or lick a frog and then lie down on the ground and look up at the stars. That’s pretty inspiring, and what also is inspiring is seeing an artist that you saw a year ago step up her game and go from internet star to real life sensation.