Fresh from a shoot with Rankin, Florence and the Machine’s titular frontwoman Florence Welch bounds into LUV Management’s Upper Street office. She floats from room to room, eyeing up the attic rooms with glittery-blue smoked eyes, applied this morning by Rankin’s make-up team. Their photo-session will later be auctioned for a children’s charity that provides funding for music projects. The deal is this: Rankin takes the shots, and Florence, armed with her Camberwell Art College illustration background - well she was accepted, but gave it up to pursue “the music thing” - will doodle over the top with her favourite story-book cartoon style. The shoot ran late, which explains the constant apologies, and the almost overdressed, dressy flared skirt, awash with her favourite florals, tulip shaped, kicking out at the waist to reveal two perfect pencils of skin, matchstick legs in sexy fifties seamed tights and heeled brogues that click together at the elevated wedge as she walks, like Dorothy wishing to go home. Beautiful and chirpy, she bounds into the interview room, a bag of props and accoutrements in one hand - relics from this morning’s studio session - and a cranberry juice carton in the other, straw inserted as not to smudge her lipstick lips. “Sorryyyyyyyyyyyy,” she says in her very English voice, butter-thick, so crisp it pops at the end of each sentence. Each word like bubblegum. A voice so unlike her carnivorous, almost violent scowl employed on songs like Girl With One Eye or Bird Song. “Wowwwwwwwww I LOVE your socks,” she points, before formal introductions. I am wearing red flannel socks I got free on Virgin Atlantic. This tickles her and she booms “I LOVE THEM” again. She talks in capitals. Sometimes italics. And ends every statement with a giggle and a smile. It is a side of Florence that often goes unnoticed. From her reputation, and the articles that precede our meeting, I was inclined to imagine a crazy bitch. It is reported that Florence often leaps offstage into the crowd and, at the South By South West festival in Texas, even ended one show by diving into a nearby swimming pool. Her most famous song, supposedly based on truth, reads, “You smashed a plate over my head/then I set fire to our bed/my black eye casts no shadow/A kick in the teeth is good for some/A kiss with a fist is better than none.” The first I heard of her was from a friend who went to see her perform at the Whitechapel Gallery, and was treated to a bout of fisticuffs. It wasn't that big a room, so when Florence and the audience member started play fighting it was a public event. At one point they were rolling round on the floor at said friend’s feet, and it was difficult to stand back because of the crowd gathered round chanting, “Fight!” at the caterwauling friends, drunk from bloodlust and beer. She was discovered by Mairead Nash, one half of girls-about-town DJ duo the Queens of Noise, singing in the toilets at a party. Off her tits. But here, today, on the top floor of an East London pub, she is utterly disarming. And, as she apologises - for the umpteenth time - for starting to talk before I’ve activated the Dictaphone, I am utterly disarmed.  

Hynam Kendall: Florence - I’m really sorry about my first question, and I’m sure you get asked it every single interview…

Florence Welch: What’s the machine??!!!

HK: No, but that’s to come later… 

FW: Oh! Ok… so what’s the question?

HK: Well, the Brit Awards... You were awarded the Critic’s Choice Gong (voted for by a journalists and broadcasters from across the music industry, aimed to recognise emerging British talent), which is an amazing thing to receive, and the person who got it before you, Adele, went on to crack America, sweep the Grammies and sell 1.2 million…

FW: So how do I feel? 

HK: Yeah, are you under a huge bubble now? Under a lot of pressure because the woman before you sold 1.2 million records... After all, it’s only the second ever to be given.

FW: When it was all happening, the only thing people were asking me was, “How does it feel winning the Brit?” It was just like, “I haven’t even done anything yet! I haven’t even finished my album! This is too much.” But now that I’ve finished the album I think a lot of the pressure has been removed, because I’ve done it now and there’s nothing else left, I just have to just let it go and see what happens. Its out of my hands… 

HK: But like you said, you got the award before you’d even finished the album, so weren’t you like, “Shit, this is based on expectation, so when it actually has come out, it might not be what they expected”?

FW: Yeah, there was a huge pressure I think, but you just have to keep doing what you were doing in the first place, which must have been right… 

HK: You seem very laid back though, so I’m sure you took it in your stride? 

FW:(Gasps) I’m laid back today (bursts with raucous laughter) but you know what? This gets easier, it’s all about learning, I was not laid back before the Brits. I was a wreck. I have days when I find all of this really hard to deal with, but as it becomes more of a job, more of a day to day thing, I do get laid back. 

HK: I have to admit, I expected someone crazier… the amount of times I’ve read articles calling you whacky or crazy (Florence bursts into continuous fits of laughter) But right now you’re so relaxed and casual, very friendly and dare I say it, normal…

FW: You know, everyone goes out and has fun, and obviously that’s something I do in my stage thing too, it’s interesting and obviously in interviews you want to talk about these things as you want it to be interesting, and the interesting stuff that happens in your life is usually the weird stuff, so I’m sure the journalists have kind of taken a hold of that and ran with it.

HK: Well I read that you’re a bit of a wild child...

FW: I am.. Well, I was, more… In some ways I think the music thing is helping me - if I didn’t have to do stuff everyday, the interviews, the gigs, I’d be really off the rails. If I didn’t have a way to focus it. It’s channelling my energy.  I’m quite protective now of my voice and my energy because I know that if I channel it all into getting wasted, I don’t have any left to function. And this is a huge undertaking - making an album, producing an album, publicising an album, and it takes a lot of energy. Even just for photo shoots, like today, I just can’t do them hung-over… I’d want to cry… I think the inspiration for a lot of my songs comes from a darker wild side of my life, but at this moment in time I’m actually quite focused… but I mean the festivals are coming, and that’s when it gets messy (roars with laughter). 

HK: How wild are we talking? 

FW: Just kids stuff!

HK: Streaking?

FW: Oh yeah, there’s been some naked tree jumping and skinny dipping. But if you grew up with the friends that I did (laughs) it was just normal. Growing up with the Camberwell art college kids… I was in with this really South London punk scene, going to a lot of squat parties… comparatively I’m low key. With my family as well, I’m the shy one. 

HK: Its funny you should say you were a part of the punk scene, as you’re very vocal about being an avid fan of pop...

FW: I guess it all just comes from just from listening to the radio, like ALL THE TIME. I love Girls Aloud. I think the new Tinchy Strider and N-Dubz song is AMAZING. I love it. I’ve been listening to it this morning. I’m thinking of covering, for Radio 1 Live Lounge, Calvin Harris’ new single. I love it. I think there’s nothing wrong with pop music. 

HK: But you don’t sound pop… more Bat-For-Lashes-Kate-Bush-bluesy-rocky-lo-fi-ultra-violent-garage-soul-folk...

FW: Fuck folk! God FUCK FOLK (laughs) But Blues - I love Blues. I’m a big fan. I grew up singing Nina Simone, Dusty Springfield, Buddy Holly. That’s why you can hear that. But I mean I love pop. LOVE IT.

HK: That can’t do wonders for your image 

FW: I’m categorically uncool. And proud of that.

HK: Let’s talk about your album. When I first heard your earlier stuff it sounded quite raw, really grubby and lo-fi and urban. And when I heard the album, some if it was quite well-produced and polished. Is that the direction you’re going… more studio - maximum produced? 

FW: I just wanted to create something that was sweeping. I get such a rush when I’m singing and I waned to recreate that through music, and I think in order to create that sense of falling-from-a-great-height it does need a certain amount of atmosphere around it that does come from big production

HK: Can you hear the difference between the more raw stuff and the slicker stuff?

FW: Which ones are you talking about? 

HK: Well, Kiss With a Fist is really stripped, it almost sounds like a demo.

FW: I just didn’t want to make a record that seemed to me like pastiche rockabilly. I know a lot of people thought that maybe that was raw, but I don’t see that. I don’t see it having any more visceral quality than any of the newer songs on the album. I think its safer to be honest. If id have stuck with that kind of music I’d have been going in a safer direction, I think. that’s like really typical, to me, that’s really typical rockabilly, which there’s loads of. 

HK: NME has already said your going to be Summer’s hottest new live act. What can we expect? 

FW: Massiveness (laughs) It’s massive now. I used to just bang a drum and sing and that’s the act. And now we’ve got a harpist, 2 keyboardists, one of them plays violin, a drummer, a bass player who also plays drums and percussion, a guitarist - but my poor guitarist, there’s not any guitar on the album, so we’ve had to find ways of him playing with different pedals so that he can play the guitar to sound like an organ or a cello or just atmosphere or a string quartet. He’s literally just like blip blip blip blip (motions someone playing with myriad pedals). It’s so big because all the songs are now pccchhhhhhhhooooo (hands gesture an explosion) We’re gonna have a choir at Glastonbury

HK: And visuals?

FW: Strobes. Excited. Excited about strobes. I was like WOWWWWWWWWW STROBES! For the song Blinding I want people to be blinded. To literally be blinded 

HK: Going back to that first question you dreaded

FW: Yesssssssssssssssssssss…..

HK: You have an ever-mutating session band, sometimes reduced to an actual machine. Are you going to make someone the permanent Machine? 

FW: We will expand to like 10 or shrink to like just me. The machine is changeable. 

HK: Who would be your dream machine? 

FW: DREAM MACHINE! (laughs) the dream machine! Hahhahahaha. I don’t know man!

HK: Girls aloud?

FW: Wow! The dream machine - Girls Aloud as backing singers WOWWWWWWWWWWWWWW (hands outstretched in grandiose statement) That would be amazing! The Liars drummers, all The Liars drummers, well, let’s just have The Liars - they’re the backing band, Girls Aloud as singers, Jason Pearce’s choir to back up the Girls, Glasvegas’  strobe lights. Wowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!!!

HK: I think music would cease to exist

FW: And it would be wonderful!

Florence & The Machine’s single Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up) is released June 22, and album Lungs is released July 6 2009, both on Island Records.