REVIEW: Florence + The Machine - Everybody Scream
Scream, Queen
49:39 // October 31st, 2025 // Polydor
Everybody Scream is the most vivid and fascinating follow-up to the jubilant Dance Fever that I could have hoped for. After traversing the warmer landscapes of her previous album, Florence now plunges into the whitewater rapids of grief and trauma — perhaps her most urgent record to date, and yet, paradoxically, one of her least densely constructed. That lack of density, however, is substituted by an almost-unrelenting primal immediacy, stacked rafter-high in ceremonial rawness, offset by Welch’s characteristically theatrical vocal performance. The sound of catharsis clad in a velvet gown, it’s both a collective and personal howl of knuckled devastation, explored through both grit and delicateness in equal measure. Everybody Scream is more than a call to action; it’s a command.
Florence Welch’s output has always been marked by beautifully single-minded musical visions — each release a sharply realised statement orbiting a singular emotional core. Everybody Scream, thankfully, doesn’t buck this trend in any jarring thematic way, but it does widen the lens slightly to allow a richer tapestry of ideas to bask in the moonlight. Inspired by an intense life period for Welch, in which she underwent life-saving surgery for an ectopic pregnancy during the Dance Fever tour, the album formed around the idea of screaming as release, and what emotions can inform such a fierce response. Threaded through it all is a witchy overtone that courses through the album’s bloodstream, both lyrically and musically. As such, the album feels very personal, full of demons unique to Welch, but also more universal ones:
Here I don’t have to be quiet,
here I don’t have to be kind,
extraordinary and normal, all at the same time
but look at me run myself ragged…
- ‘‘Everybody Scream’’
I crawled up from under the earth,
broken nails and coughing dirt,
spitting out my songs so you could sing along…
It must be nice to be a man,
and make boring music just because you can,
so this one’s for the ladies..
- ‘‘One Of The Greats’’
I sit in saltwater,
call in a vision of my daughter,
place my grief upon the altar…
- ‘‘You Can Have It All’’
A cry of jubilation is the most resonant one on this collection, however, and the celebration of womanhood rings as the enduring base note of this howl. The witchcraft motif could’ve tipped into cliche in lesser hands — the aesthetic has had a busy few years — but in Welch’s cupped hands it feels authentic, not costume. The overtone does two things: it roots the record in ritual and ceremony, while also allowing Welch to mythologise women’s power. Obviously the idea of witchcraft as a belief system is far more than just myth, but the two-hander of realism (in a contrast to Dance Fever’s more pronounced folkloric elements) and the simultaneous invocation of legend gives both grounded weight and a complex, mythic power to the idea of woman’s strength. Manifested as music that treads the ritualistic and the folky, the deceptively simple compositions bloom into fullness via a rich orchestral undercurrent that crafts the illusion of basic music afforded complexity through the process of performing them and introducing voice. The decision to weave such lavish orchestration into the prayer-circle simplicity of some of these songs is an inspired choice, especially given the manner in which they are very gradually introduced as the songs develop, such as on ‘‘One Of The Greats’’, ‘‘Witch Dance’’, and ‘‘Perfume and Milk’’.
In matching the lyrical ferocity and underlying intensity, the instrumentation becomes a vessel of tension and release, and propels the record’s visceral impact. The omnipresent heartbeat of pounding drums and screeching violin strings haunts the main pathway of this album, keeping metronomic intonation and emphasising the underlying viciousness of the experience. The drums announce themselves early, thumping through the warm chime of the title track’s intro and jolting it into purposeful life. ‘‘You Can Have It All’’’s use of violin squeals with its increasing liveliness is a particular highlight, leading into a second chorus that waxes more frantic than previously, and projecting the first chorus through a warped mirror to illustrate the increasing frenzy. These flourishes serve as touchstone motifs, keeping the suggestion of life and its inherent disharmony always within grasp — beauty forever shadowed by chaos. ‘‘Witch Dance’’’s background wails further this sense of ritual offhandedness with a literal manifestation of the album’s title, and in tandem with the power anthem undercurrent of certain cuts (‘‘Sympathy Magic’’ and ‘‘Kraken’’), it’s a choice that works extremely well.
The emotional flourishes are exemplified in the record’s more raucous moments, which see the energetic heat of the lyrics brought to life with dramatic, thumping verve. However, it’s maybe on the record’s softer tracks (‘‘Buckle’’, ‘‘Perfume and Milk’’, ‘‘Drink Deep’’, ‘‘Music By Men’’) that the emotionality is at its purest. Not only is the lyrical content allowed a cleaner, more feathery landing, but the gentle earnestness of the pieces, often told through vibrating guitar or dusty piano keys, feels less performative. ‘‘Perfume and Milk’’ and ‘‘Music By Men’’ stand out in this regard, their simple bedside manner betrayed by their vivid imagery and gorgeous vocal showcase. ‘‘Music By Men’’’s simultaneously soothing yet mournful tone perfectly suits its lyrics, reflecting the themes with a gentle restraint that it does not deserve, but certainly warrants as a display of womanly power. It’s all gloriously overwrought of course, but when Welch exorcises her demons you half-believe she’s mid-ritual with candles melting all around her. If you don’t want to hurl your Merlot into the fireplace and scream along with her in response, you’re doing it wrong.
A Halloween release date feels almost preordained for this earthy cataclysm of an album. It’s a potent, immediate release of urgent yet accessible power, and in many ways represents Florence at her most serious despite the overall exultant theme. Expressing its core ideas by way of a series of musical vignettes, all linked through the common motifs of witchcraft and spiritual performance is an inspired mode of storytelling for this slightly broader work, and its ideas all coalesce with an impressive fluidity despite the intended DIY scrappiness in the sound. For the group, it feels like a departure as much as a continuation, with a sound that is unmistakably their own but also unusual in the context of their discography. This is a heart-wrenching, richly-wrought and ultimately uplifting blaze of an album — nuanced when it shouts, and powerful even when it whispers into the wind. Everybody Scream isn’t just a noise. It’s ritual.
9/10