While most female pop singers head to safe, radio-ready electro producers to help them craft danceable tracks with big hit potential, there are a few who go the other way, forging their own, entirely original path. Florence Welch, the songwriter and vocalist of indie powerhouse Florence + the Machine, is just such a woman. She is incredibly gifted artist, the kind that truly pours everything she has into each and every track, and nowhere is that more apparent than with the group’s latest album, How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful. Recently, Welch spoke to me about writing the new record, and how it’s still helping her uncover how she feels about all the life events that inspired the music.

The songs on this album don’t seem to have a typical structure. Is that a purposeful decision, or was it something that just happened in the writing?

I think some of them follow traditional structures. I was even quite nervous about “Ship To Wreck” because I felt it followed it quite a lot. I’ve never followed traditional song structures that much, because I write quite instinctively. I’m not trained. I just do what feels good. “Ship To Wreck” did follow what I thought was quite a traditional structure. I went back to Markus (Dravs, the producer of the album), and I asked him “Where’s the big finish? Where’s the trick?” and he said “No, that’s what’s good about it. It’s a song.” He encouraged a vulnerability in me, and he encouraged me to just let a song be a song. “What Kind of Man” and “St. Jude” aren’t typical songs, no. I’ve never really thought about writing music that way. You just write it as it comes.

How many songs did you have to write and record for this album?

So many. I had a few false starts. It took me a little while to find the identity of this record, because for a while I was still in Ceremonials world. We were in Los Angeles, and we were getting kind of obsessed with the LA witchcraft scene, and we had this idea of making a concept album about a Hollywood witch trial. It was all still quite doomy and gothic. As time progressed, the bigness of my surroundings—the sky as I drove around in cars, open windows and all that—it opened up the sound, so when I went back I had simpler songs like “St. Jude”, and I had some other bigger, more gothic ones. Markus was like “this is cool, but I feel like this is something that you’ve done before”, and he encouraged me to be brave and not hide behind things. This album is a disrobing. With Ceremonials there was so much gothic drama and imagery. It was wonderful! It was a massive creation. Markus encouraged me to strip away all that stuff. I was fighting tooth and nail at the beginning. I kept demanding more backing vocals and layers. We came to a really happy place after a few battles. Before this, I wanted to hide everything and disguise all that stuff, but he wouldn’t let me. He told me I couldn’t hide anymore. I think that was really good for me.

What were you trying to hide with all of your massive arrangements and backing vocalists?

I wanted to say how I felt about something without having to let people know what was actually going on. I felt like some of it was my fault...it’s quite a dark record, but that’s what was good about it. It was overwhelming, but so was the time when I wrote it. I had been on tour with Lungs, and I was only twenty one. I had gone up and never really come back down. I’m so glad that I made something of it. With this record, I’ve had a bit of time to stop and get to know myself again, and I feel more comfortable in being more direct.

The narrative that’s going through the videos, and especially the clip for “What Kind of Man," which is a very graphic one...where is that story coming from?

We were looking a lot at this idea of purgatory and we used Dante’s Inferno as a reference. We thought a lot about the idea that you go down these levels of hell and have to find your way back out of it. I think sometimes you can get into a situation or a relationship that keeps repeating itself. Everybody's had that relationship you keep going back to, but for some reason it doesn’t work, and it feels as if you’re picking yourself up and dropping again. You just keep going back. That was the frustration and the feeling that we were trying to express.

What do you want people to take away from listening to the new album, versus what they got from the first two?

I don’t know. I needed to do this album. It really helped me. The album kept me safe and gave me structure when I felt like everything had crumbled. I tried to have this year off when everything was going to be calm. Everything was fucking bananas instead. Being able to piece things together by making this record was so important for me...and I haven’t even thought about how people will feel about it. When I was making it, I was doing it so much for myself that I almost didn’t even think of anyone else listening to it. It’s a strange position to be in, because it is so personal. I can’t really think about what people will think...I just have to let it go. Otherwise I’d never be able to release it.

When I listen to the songs on Ceremonials, they all make me feel a certain way, but when I hear the singles from the new album, they evoke very different emotions. I love that your albums are making me feel different things.

I’m glad to hear that. I think that’s what it’s all about. It’s there to create a feeling, because it started with a feeling I had to get out of my body. This is the only vehicle I have to do that, otherwise I’d go insane. I’m so lucky that I have this outlet, because it’s what keeps me from going crazy. It’s interesting to take these feelings out of yourself, and then hear from people that they felt the same. It’s cathartic for me. I didn’t know what else to do. I’m not used to feeling angry. I find anger quite uncomfortable as an emotion. My anger in person is very quiet. That’s maybe why some of my songs are so big and aggressive—it’s how I find my outlet.

It’s funny that the album is named after the sky, because I spent the whole time trying to get out of it, just climbing upwards.

I can’t say I’ve ever had someone describe the process of writing and recording an album in such a way.

I think it’s only when you start talking about it that you realize how you actually feel about it. It’s weird doing interviews, because every once in a while I’ll think “oh, I didn’t know that’s how I felt about that.”

Florence + the Machine's How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful is out now via Republic Records.