FLORENCE AND THE MACHINE,  Lungs Island ****

When Florence Welch picked up the Critics’ Choice Award at the 2009 Brit awards (a newcomer’s gong that last year went to Adele) there was

a certain inevitability to it. For the past 12 months, the London-based singer has been the talk of polite indie society.

Pitched somewhere between Kate Bush and Björk, Welch and her band, The Machine, have an eclectically enthusiastic racket of a sound that is just the right side of stroppy and petulant. Having already played Glastonbury (in 2008), appeared on numerous front covers and released a bunch of top-class singles to critical and commercial approval, there is no huge surprise with this debut album – we’ve had quite a while to get used to Florence and The Machine.

From the get-go, Welch comes across as Lily Allen's scarier, goth older sister. Dog Days Are Overbegins as a chirpy pop song, then becomes primal as Welch turns her intensity button up to 11. The current single, Rabbit Heart (apparently written because her label wanted something more upbeat), does the up-tempo thing admirably, but Welch still manages to squeeze in some vaguely disturbing imagery.

Stand-out track Kiss with a Fisthas a Ramones-type feel to it: "You hit me once, I hit you back, you gave a kick, I gave a slap, You smashed a plate over my head, Then I set fire to your bed". In many ways this song is a contemporary retort to Goffin and King's He Hit Me (And It Felt Like a Kiss).

Throw in a dexterous feel for genre-skipping and an ace cover of Candi Staton's You've Got the Love, and one can only conclude that Florence and The Machine have definitely delivered on both the promise and the hype. www.myspace.com/florenceand themachinemusic

Download tracks: Kiss with a Fist, Rabbit Heart