We dare you to find someone more effortlessly at ease on stage than Florence Welch.

The 32-year-old leader of the bombastic British rock band Florence + the Machine leaps barefoot across the stage during their concerts, never missing a high note as she sprints out to meet the crowd, spins in the air and then doubles back to her microphone stand.

But on the eve of their "High as Hope" tour — which comes to Nashville's Bridgestone Arena on Oct. 2 — Welch laughs, and says she always has the same thought before she hits the road.

"I literally just think, 'There's no way I can do this.' "

"As soon as the tour starts, I'm fine. But just before I have to go, I get this sense of, like, cosmic exhaustion. I don't even know if I'm able to stand up, let alone do the tour. Which I think is maybe nerves and pressure. ... It's a funny thing, because you look at it, and you're like, 'This hasn't even started yet, and I'm so tired.' "

On the other hand, when Welch began work on the band's 2018 album, "High as Hope," she was newly free of the pressure she'd felt for years in the studio.

It's the first album she's made since she decided to quit drinking a few years ago, and it provides her with her first producer credit.

"Hope," in turn, has been praised for its stark, minimal production and intimate songs, featuring some of Welch's most personal lyrics to date. Lead-off single and standout "Hunger" starts with this arresting line: "At 17, I started to starve myself."

In a pre-tour conversation with The Tennessean, Welch was an open book, discussing the "internalized pressure" she felt when trying to follow up the band's 2009 debut, her wildest tour production ideas and the parts of her "rock 'n' roll lifestyle" she could do without.

'The best way' to make music

On "High as Hope," Welch says she was able to get back to the mindset she had when making the band's 2009 debut album, "Lungs."

"With your first record, you have no expectations of yourself, because you're just like, 'I don't know how to make music or make songs, and no one's probably going to listen! I can just do whatever I want!' " she says with a laugh.

"And then with your second and third (album), there's quite a lot of pressure on second and thirds now, and internalized pressure on myself. And people are like, 'Are you gonna last? What's coming next? Are you gonna be able to progress as an artist?' You're like, 'S--t. What kind of music do I want to keep making?'

"It was almost like I'd learned so much from the making of those three, and by the time it came to make this one, I had such a sure sense of who I was as a musician and as an artist. And weirdly, that allowed me to go back to making music how I started in the beginning ... probably the first way that I tried to (make music), which was without any sense of expectation and a real sense of joy, is the best way."

'I want people to feel totally absorbed'

The tour's striking set design includes a multi-level stage, with steps jutting out all around like thin layers of rock. Welch explores that space thoroughly during the show, as massive flowing drapes rise and fall overhead.

It was designed and directed by Willo Perron, the visual force behind recent tours by Jay-Z and St. Vincent, among countless other prestigious projects. Welch says they've been working together "from the beginning."

"It's funny because I can never really give him specifics. I just said I wanted it to be incredibly experiential. I want people to feel totally absorbed by the whole thing."

"You want people to feel held in the space," she continues. "But without using a lot of screens. It's never very tech-y, my stuff. I always want it to feel totally organic.

"We were even talking about, maybe like, scent design, so you could make it smell incense-y. ... I was like, 'Is scent design on tour a thing?' They're like, 'OK, now you're getting crazy!' "

'I just see everything as one big collage'

The visual side of Welch's work is never an afterthought. She went to art college before opting to pursue music full time, and her handwritten lyric sheets and poems often double as visual art pieces. Earlier this year, "Late Night" host Seth Meyers noted that Welch was the first guest who redecorated their own dressing room.

"I've always had a very particular sense of aesthetic," she says.

"Even when I was a kid, I was always drawing and writing poems. The first diary I had was actually a visual diary of drawings of things that would happen to me. There's one drawing of me with my insides outside of my body, and then a big heart on top of it, which I think was a really astute prophecy of how I was gonna deal with life and my relationships," she says with a laugh. " ... I never really lost the art college sensibility that there should be no separation between anything in your life. It's all one ongoing project. I just see everything as one big collage, all together: the lyrics, the artwork, the stage, the outfits."

'I'm totally free'

After wrapping the band's last tour in 2016, Welch got to spend much of the next two years quietly, and largely out of the spotlight. She's spent the summer going from zero to 100, playing arenas and headlining festivals, making high-profile TV appearances and opening up in interviews for hours at a stretch.

"I think the older you get, the more you realize that it's kind of an unnatural way to live your life, but it's the one that I've chosen. It's funny, every time that I get on board for a big tour, I'm like, 'I will never do this again.' "

But she says the routine has made the stage an even more powerful refuge, and the elation feels the same now as it did when she was first performing in clubs.

"It's the same feeling of, 'I'm totally free.' It's weird because people definitely are expecting stuff from you, but there's also, for me, a feeling of total freedom and lack of expectation. I guess I'm totally in the moment and perhaps I'm allowed to be the freest expression of myself. If I was to do that in everyday life, I would probably be committed (laughs), but on stage, I feel totally released. Even if stuff around it gets more professional and less chaotic — which is all good — my relationship to the performance has only gotten stronger over time."

If you go

What: Florence + the Machine in concert

When: 7 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 2

Where: Bridgestone Arena

Tickets: $39.50 to $99.50