Review

Back in August 2023, complications from a miscarriage forced Florence + The Machine’s frontwoman and lead songwriter, Florence Welch, to cancel several of the band’s shows as she underwent life-saving surgery. Two years after this incident, as the group announced their sixth album, Welch shared the weight that this moment carried with her in an interview with the Guardian: "the closest I came to making life,” she said, “was the closest I came to death." This tragedy informs Everybody Scream. And how could it be otherwise? There has always been a sense that Florence Welch - more so than most artists - puts her body on the line when it comes to making her music. In her songs and during live performances, she switches from being as fragile as a flower to being as sure-footed as a tightrope walker; her voice will dip and swoon, seeming to collapse with vulnerability, then suddenly stand upright - fierce and frightening and commanding. If we can allow ourselves to be overly dramatic, it does sometimes feel like Welch’s body is simply an imperfect vessel for channelling otherworldly sounds. To a large extent, then, Everybody Scream is about the toll that life and art take on a body (especially a woman’s body, which, as Welch emphasises in several songs, is graded differently than a man’s). The title track comes first, and it feels like an instant catharsis: “I break down (no), and get up, and do it all again/Because it's never enough.” There are ‘screams’ in this song, but not the piercing kind; they’re background howls, the kind that might occupy the hidden recesses of your mind when you’re trying to think about anything else. As with many of the album’s songs, producer Mark Bowen (of post-punk outfit Idles) gives the title track a sharp edge, helping to tether down Welch’s big voice with punchy, punk-esque guitars and drums. You notice elsewhere that this scuzzy vibe helps Welch access her anger and hammer home certain lyrics that mightn’t have worked on previous Florence albums, eg. “​​​​It must be nice to be a man and make boring music just because you can” on ‘One of the Greats’. By contrast, Aaron Dessner’s influence is felt everywhere on ‘The Old Religion’ - the album’s enigmatic highlight - which features a gorgeous arrangement that wouldn’t have sounded out of place on The National’s High Violet album. Thematically, Everybody Scream is expansive; it takes in witchcraft and folk horror on songs like ‘Witch Dance’ and ‘Sympathy Magic’, while also veering to gossip-y, confessional songwriting (which is in vogue now, ask Lily Allen) on songs like ‘Music by Men’. You might argue whether this always works; if we’re being kind, we’d say that this is all part of Welch’s compelling outpouring of emotion, while if we’re being critical, we might say that it leads to a jarring clash of ideas. Overall though, there’s no arguing that Florence + The Machine isn’t one of the most vital bands in the world today.