Fair to say, Aura Dione got off pretty lightly in the “you racist!” stakes.

[Video][Website]
[4.88]

Brad Shoup: Once again, Florence + The Machine are unable to resist the dark spell of maximalism. Primitive drumming evolves into a civilizing force of organ, chorus, and harp. This isn’t to say that they’re uppity, it’s just fairer to say they’re comfortable in their own skin. Welch knows it’s not about bursting out of the blocks; it’s all about the race. It’s the fireworks before the breakup blackness, with the singer laying out the ways she and her blue-eyed paramour are separate and unequal. “You want a revelation, some kind of resolution,” she taunts — I thought I heard “revolution,” but that’s definitely the last thing on her mind. Though it’s utterly lowbrow to consider, violence is her last resort, but it’s still a constant threat. I may be in the minority, but as usual, I’m concerned with the integration of all the sonic elements. Clearly Welch is uneasy about any kind of mixing.
[8]

Iain Mew: I’m now quite happy that I’ve never liked Florence’s overstuffed and subtlety-free music, because it means that I don’t have to make any attempt to justify this video.
[3]

Zach Lyon: The song is a [5] like every song I’ve heard from Florence that isn’t “Dog Days,” all of which sound like meaningless, easy-to-ignore Rennfest-inflicted mediocrity. I’m not reviewing the video with my score, but my feelings on this song are certainly skewed by the knowledge that it’s performed by someone who partook in its filming. I can’t really look at her or her band without thinking about the video: blackface, fetishization of black bodies, massive cultural appropriation, Othering, demonisation of foreign cultures/skin colors, complete lack of research into said foreign cultures, an army of little Christian white boys saving her at the end (and not to mention this fun little pic that surfaced of her doing some happy NDN appropriation) — how the FUCK do her fans forgive all that? That isn’t “gray area” racism, that’s just straight up racism. How can I really judge “No Light, No Light” simply for what it is when everyone involved in the video production, including the musicians themselves, seemed to use that title as a jump-off for one big dark-is-evil-so-dark-people-are-evil narrative?
[2]

Katherine St Asaph: I’m the one who talked up “What the Water Gave Me,” so you might expect me to defend this video. Screw that. The video practically is racist imagery, and not original either; “evil black and/or blackface priest dude ruins whiter protagonists, creates plot” was overused from use one. And no, YouTube knights, “but she’s besties with Dizzee Rascal!” wouldn’t count even if you cared who he was before; nor would her “friendships” with Drake or Beyonce count even if you regularly saw them photographed together. Neither does “you just don’t appreciate the music!” stanning; go back and look at my previous fucking scores. That’s the worst part. Nothing in the lyrics or song — for all the bombast, it’s a quite subtle portrayal of a relationship snuffed out — called for such a treatment. In other words, Florence fucked up major when she had to go out of her way to fuck up, and when she didn’t exactly need more critical demerits. I am livid.
[5]

Anthony Easton: Oh, that wonderful place where cackhanded earnestness and artsy pretentiousness collapse into po-faced accidental racism. Sort of like the plot of a David Lodge novel rewritten by Will Self, but less clever.
[3]

Edward Okulicz: There might be no singer on the earth who needs more to learn the lesson that great art is capable of speaking for itself than Florence Welch. You don’t need big arty videos; they too can be art but just as often can be self-indulgent nonsense. You don’t need to signify so much if you just are. God, you don’t need any of this. “No Light, No Light” is strong enough to stand on its own merits, and all of these diversions make Florence out to be some kind of magician guarding her secrets with five-dollar words, urging you to look until you spot the coin behind her ear, cheapening her power. But away from that, this is Ceremonials‘ equivalent of her first album’s “Howl,” as tightly coiled and hungry, if not quite as poetic. She sings the hell out of it too; her gifts are easy to see if you can avoid all her vocal cloaking and ill-fated video art projects.
[8]

Alfred Soto: She’s so blank that the impressive shows of soul could have been punched in remotely via computer. Fans pretend she’s deeper than Rihanna though.
[5]

Jonathan Bogart: I’m ignoring the video — as confused in its messaging about religion as it is about race — because the song in itself is a one-note stomp that doesn’t bother with dynamics, just crescendos throughout. Which might be okay if it had anything to say beyond “Florence Welch sure has some pipes, huh?”
[5]