Reader beware: this album review discusses pregnancy loss and the occult.
Florence Welch of Florence + The Machine is no stranger to exploring witchy textures and motifs in her music. On her sixth album, Everybody Scream, she goes deeper into the occult than ever before, evoking images of ancient Samhain rituals and casting herself as the Divine Feminine on her aptly timed Halloween release.
Folk horror is at the forefront of this record, from tales of re-animation on “One of the Greats” to a metamorphosis into the “Kraken” — but the true horror within Everybody Scream is somatic. Welch wrote many of these songs in response to a life-threatening ectopic pregnancy she suffered in 2023 while on tour for her last album, Dance Fever. Though Everybody Scream may liken Welch’s challenges and coping strategies to magical happenings and sorcerous rebirth, at the heart of these adversities are ancient tribulations of womanhood, making this album far from make-believe for many of her fans.
Everybody Scream’s opening title track immediately sets the stage for this LP: driving art pop sounds propel Welch’s affirmation that the stage is where she belongs, despite the toll it takes on her body. “Look at me run myself ragged / Blood on the stage / But how can I leave you when you’re calling my name?”
Literal internal bleeding had cut Welch’s last tour short, but, like drinking mugwort tea when the veil is thin, she experiences a Frankenstein’s monster-like revival on the second track, “One of the Greats.” This confessional-style track expresses Welch’s disillusionment with both fame and men in the music industry. “It’s funny how men don’t find power very sexy,” she professes with a wink.
It wouldn’t be a proper Florence + The Machine album without some tracks made for ethereal interpretive dancing, and the next two songs, “Witch Dance” and “Sympathy Magic,” are made for just that: thrashing about in what Welch described to The Current as “a slightly possessed way.” The animalistic panting in the background of “Witch Dance” emphasizes its manic energy, and Florence + The Machine’s signature pounding drums in “Sympathy Magic” continue the incantation. “Sympathy Magic” is on the darker side thematically, though, as Welch describes an unfamiliarity with the self in the aftermath of her trauma. “Am I so different? / Have I changed? / I do not recognize my own face,” she ponders, ending the track with a shriek.
Everybody Scream was recorded at producer Aaron Dessner's Long Pond Studio in New York, known for being the birthplace of Taylor Swift’s Folklore. Welch told The Current that the area had “Blair Witch energy,” and this otherworldly location is where “Perfume and Milk” and “The Old Religion” were conceived.
Both of these tracks explore feminine energy. The circle of life comes up in “Perfume and Milk,” as Welch likens the cycles of the body to the life cycle of nature and the changing of the seasons. In folk religion, Mother Nature is deeply intertwined with the concept of the Divine Feminine or the Triple Goddess (the life cycle of maiden, mother, and crone), and in “Perfume and Milk,” Welch postures herself as a force of nature in a witchy goddess way, embodying the maternal Divine Feminine within pulsing instrumentation.
“The Old Religion” is more about what the title suggests: occult tradition. But Welch’s goddess energy turns more into feminine rage as she sings, “So tired of being careful / So tired of being still / Give me something I can crush / Something I can kill.” The track builds intensity with primordial drumming and subtle synths in a way that feels very feral.
Welch goes all-in with ritualism and Samhain imagery on “Drink Deep.” In it, we’re transported back in time as Welch is forced to drink some sort of powerful potion. The narrative gets even darker once she realizes what’s in the drink and declares, “It was made from me.” Like a witchcraft liturgy, Welch is drinking her own blood, meaning the suffering is coming from her own body. While earlier in the album, her body was one with the earth, now her body is betraying her — a clear allegory for her life-threatening ectopic pregnancy. This medieval-sounding, incantation-like track makes way for the song that encapsulates the cathartic purpose of this album, “You Can Have It All.”
“You Can Have It All,” backed at times by the discordant sound of distant screams, delves deep into the complicated agony of pregnancy loss. Welch told The Current that she built the song off the lyrics “Dug a hole in the garden / And buried a scream / And from it grew / A bright red tree.” Her emotional anguish is told in the context of death and burial rituals. Perhaps the most heartbreaking part of the song is when she cries, “Am I a woman now?” as she circles back to the rites of passage in the cycle of womanhood. Despite the devastating lyrical nature of the track, it's a phenomenal piece of baroque pop, complete with plenty of drama and strings.
A secondary woe Welch deals with on Everybody Scream is relationship troubles, some of which are undoubtedly intertwined with her pregnancy loss. While very little is known about her indie guitarist partner, Welch characterizes him as a somewhat star-crossed lover in “Buckle.” There’s a sense of desperation to the song as she describes their love as something that cannot seem to work, lamenting, “I made a thousand people love me / And now I’m all alone.” This track is possibly the most conventional-sounding love song the band has ever put out, with just a simple acoustic guitar in the background.
The ever-ethereal Welch ends her haunting Halloween album with “And Love,” a gentle resolution complete with angelic harp. Almost 50 minutes into a theatrical, powerful, passionate record, the calm conclusion feels more cathartic than cliché. By this point in listening, you’re rooting for Welch to find peace, and, somehow, she does.
Sonically, Everybody Scream delivers exactly what we’ve come to know and love from Florence + The Machine. While it doesn’t come with too many musical surprises, the album packs a definite punch. Orchestral chamber pop never seems to go out of style when done right, and this record hits all the right notes. It’s a wild ride of a listen, and it sets the perfect tone for some late autumn listening to a topic many women are all too familiar with. There’s nothing quite like being blessed with new Florence + The Machine on this Blessed Samhain!
