Florence + the Machine is that rare phenomenon that somehow manages to convince you they're a cult hit well into the springtime of their commercial success. 

Perhaps it's the whole museum-piece feel to their musicality, or the fact that lead singer and creative doyenne Florence Welch has been made a kind of Christina Aguilera to fellow big-throated British crooner Adele's Britney Spears in the mainstream media lately.

This odd duality has only tempered the band's underdog resolve - easily the operative sentiment on sophomore release Ceremonials, a spectacular update of the baroque-rock style of debut album Lungs. Where the latter was a magnetic staring contest between Welch's knotty wordplay and the Machine's emotional thunderstorms, Ceremonials is pretty much all wind and rain.

On second-half standout "Spectrum", for example, deeply metaphorical lyrics about light and color are bellowed between spine-tingling harp solos and pulsating horns. Welch's stark, standalone images of "Metal on our tongues/ And silver in our lungs" are the best kind of imagination fodder - whatever their meaning, they're far more forceful as pure poetry.

Similarly, second single "Shake It Out" gallops along the same tribal wave that carried Lungs' smash hit "Dog Days Are Over", which gets a far more literal treatment on Ceremonials in the form of "Heartlines", where Welch dances the role of a shamaness healer examining animal entrails and reading palms.

Elsewhere, iron boots like the plodding "Seven Devils" are more than made up for by the jubilant litheness of cuts like "All This and Heaven Too" and the Bowie-esque "Breaking Down", while Welch all but dons her Stevie Nicks wig for lead single "What the Water Gave Me". With influences like these and more talent than an army of American Idol-ers, there's no doubt Florence + the Machine will rage hard well into their ever-flourishing future.