This Halloween has brought us an undeniable treat in the shape of a sixth album from Florence + The Machine. The trailblazing British art rock band fronted by the ethereal Florence Welch have enjoyed an award-studded career spanning the best part of twenty years – but there’s more to stardom than champagne and trophies, as ‘Everybody Scream’ shows.
The album opens with lead single ‘Everybody Scream,’ which subverts the dreaded pale, male and staleness of ‘stomp-clap’ music by turning those tired thuds and chants upside down. Instead of the usual, futile ‘Ho’s and ‘Hey’s, the track’s Viking-style chants play out like a series of stage directions: ‘Dance!’ ‘Sing!’ ‘Move!’ ‘Turn!’ ‘Move!’ ‘Shake!’ Welch is the puppet on a string subjected to these demands, and her animalistic wails of ‘Look at me run myself ragged / Blood on the stage / But how can I leave you when you’re screaming my name?’ dictate that she’s had enough. She refers to her on-stage persona in the second person, conveying a lack of recognition of herself for which fame is responsible: ‘The magic and the misery, madness and the mystery / Oh, what has it done to me?’
Welch throws further (very justified) criticism at the gender divide between men and women in the music industry in the track ‘Music By Men.’ The line ‘I always thought I was nice, I thought I was kind / ‘Til I tried to do something that was almost real life’ hints at the media’s habit of villainising women by twisting any minor occurrence into a cancellable offence. She name-checks The 1975 as one of the male bands that can achieve success by doing the bare minimum, while Welch ‘breaks [her] back to get four out of five.’
The contrast between personal and parasocial relationships is a deep through-line of the album. A line in ‘Buckle’ succinctly and cleverly sums up the difference: ‘A crowd of thousands came to see me and you couldn’t reply for three days.’ No matter how much appreciation Welch has for her fans, they can never make up for what’s lacking in her personal life. This serves not only as an outlet for Welch but as a reminder to her fans of the dangers of becoming too attached to public figures; celebrities don’t know you, and you don’t know them.
‘Everybody Scream’ is an album that stands against censorship, shedding light unapologetically on the deepest vulnerabilities that stem from the pressure of the public eye. It’s the kind of confident, self-assured statement piece that can only come from someone who’s spent years under the scrutiny of its harsh light – wrapped up in a whimsical, theatrical bow that makes it quintessentially Florence.
