There is a spiritual mysticism, a polite dark-folk, a profoundly gothic, dark but vital art that shines through the lines and sounds of Florence + The Machine's new album, entitled “Everybody Scream” in the name of an emotional universality capable of exploding in each of us. We need to dig inside ourselves, get to know ourselves and learn, to always land in new personal and collective universes capable of evaluating the perception we have of ourselves and calibrating the one with which we look and feel what surrounds us.
Florence Welch faced the last period of her life on a path of rebirth, awareness and healing, primarily physical and finally artistic, which echoes throughout the album and is affected by the process of renewal and re-appropriation with which she had to interface. During the “Dance Fever Tour” of 2022-23 she had to undergo a surgery that saved her life, being forced to cancel the dates of what was a strongly desired and inspirational album created during the pandemic, a product of important artistic value for the band, considering the exegesis of the historical period.
“Everybody Scream” comes out specifically on Halloween, when the boundary between the living and the dead is so blurred that it creates a single pagan celebration that dissolves time, where spiritual and earthly entities solemnly coexist. The song that opens the album, eponymous, evocative single, invites us to cross the threshold of any beyond, to march towards the beginning of a journey between “Alice in Wonderland” and “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”, between sensorial imagination and fantasy.
In “One Of The Greats”, the second single, there is the suspension of time and the intimate reflection that links Florence Welch to the deepest sense of mortality and celebrity as great artist inserted in a music industry that is perhaps still too patriarchal – “It must be nice to be a man and make boring music just because you can/ now don't get me wrong I'm a fan/ you're my second favorite frontman” – which tends to decide at a table the artistic value of whoever sits at its table. All played and sung in a single take, accompanied by the guitar of Mark Bowen of Idles, which gives an even more expressive and definitive aura to the song.
The magical atmospheres, the dark-glam, the sonic intrigues, the harp, the ancestral dancing mania as an act aimed at exorcising the present and ecstatic the participants involved, creating a mystical and devoted community, accompany us for the entire album. “Witch Dance”, “Sympathy Magic”, “Perfume And Milk” alternate alt-pop accents with electronics, ethereal choirs, hinted and never too intrusive guitars; “Kraken” and “The Old Religion” invoke a typical sound crescendo of the London band, as well as in “You Can Have It All”, where the choral carpet involuntarily takes us back to the Fontaines Dc of “A Hero's Death” and the melodic, sonic sustain is influenced by the production of Aaron Dessner, National guitarist and producer of the album, as well as Mark Bowen, also producer together with Welch herself and James Ford.
“Music By Men” unconsciously drags me towards “Far From Any Road” by Handsome Family, chosen as main theme for the first season of “True Detective”, another involuntary association where the occult accompanied the protagonists on a personal and collective exploratory journey. “Drink Deep” is the most expressive and shamanic song on the entire album. Excellent production and intimate interpretation, lysergic-musical, hypnotic, meditative ritual, in which the deep, vibrated and sustained voice embraces us completely and grants us access to “the hidden folk” found by Welch in a continuous search between mythology and oral tradition, like a modern Loreena McKennitt.
The theatrical and decadent imagery of exploratory rites between woods and fires and real stages between audiences and artificial lights, allows us to gracefully twirl in the meanders of our intimacy thanks to a frank and revealing representation of the, at times primitive, complexity of human nature.
“And Love” is the final piece of the orchestral ritual in which one participated, “peace is coming” is the line repeated almost in a messianic loop and, to the poet's discomfort, “we went out to see the stars again” after a process of confrontation and clash between the forces that govern us.
“Everybody Scream” is an album of tension and extension, minimalist and intimate more than the rest of Florence + The Machine's production, in which subdued sounds and digressions dark they indulge in baroque eccentricity, art-pop and folk horror.
In the preface of her book of poems, “Useless Magic – Lyrics and Poetry”, which here too unintentionally leads us to draw a humanly similar – rather than musical – connection with Billy Corgan and her book of poems “Blinking With Fists – Poem”, Florence Welch writes that she does not know how a song becomes a song and a poem becomes a poem, they simply flow within us. “You can have everything”, states the preface again. Having reached this point and to stay on topic, whether it's in headphones or in the stereo, take it all and enjoy it.
02/11/2025
Antonio Santini for SANREMO.FM
