Like the hum of fridges, the sound of Florence and the Machine – that vaguely witchy clash of Stevie Nicks, Enya and a Wagnerian gospel choir topped with Welch's brassy bellow – has become so ubiquitous you barely notice it any more. If Florence isn't warbling away over film soundtracks, TV ads, goals of the week and Crimewatch reconstructions (probably), she's inspiring a generation of wicker princess imitators (Kyla La Grange, Ellie Goulding) or turning up as go-to guest vocalist so often she has joined Mary J Blige in all but having the word "featuring" attached by deed poll as a prefix to her name. Just last week, she was here trilling along with the Rolling Stones. Replacing Mary J Blige.
When life's background sound is brought to the fore, though, it tends to irritate. A stylish art deco set and an outfit of black cape and leotard that makes her resemble The Tempest's Ariel gone goth fail to disguise that Florence's music follows a largely artless formula. Downbeat intros on piano, harp or drums like gathering thunder prelude bombastic barrages of tune-gargling pagan folk and early-80s Fleetwood Mac. It's akin to scenes of Mayan apocalypse slotted into the musical Hair. The bouts of X Factoresque vocal acrobatics are Olympic in scale and endurance. It's all so histrionic that to pick out a solid melody line in Only If for a Night or No Light is often as tough as deciding which part of a monsoon is the wettest. Despite many, many drop-down gospel interludes for Florence to make attempts at the world high note-holding record, she is too indelicate to channel the spirits of Kate Bush or Rhiannon; her overemotive wail rather suggests a tribal T'Pau and feels ludicrously overegged on a decadent, orchestral You've Got the Love. Really, just how passionate can you be about an involuntary impulse to put your hands up in the air?
Though Florence's swift rise to the status of sync-savvy Grammy queen doesn't allow for wild punk variations like Kiss With a Fist any more, her best moments buck against the prevailing bluster – when Rabbit Heart takes on a housey plink, Heartlines gathers a country stomp or Shake It Out finds a stirring nobility in the art of conquering hangovers. But it is Florence's stage antics that really enliven the night, as she rushes around like an interpretive dancer portraying fire, twirls like a marionette, offers herself as a sacrifice to some ancient god she has spotted in the lighting rig and tries to start an arena-wide snog-in before Spectrum. Without her infectious joie de vivre, we'd have been swimming through soup.
• What have you been to see lately? Tell us about it on Twitter using #GdnGig
