Having already earned her stripes as a real witchy woman with 2022’s Dance Fever, Florence + the Machine’s Florence Welch aims to take that “honorary” status to a more full-blown one with Everybody Scream. A triumphant ode to the occult, it also marks the band’s sixth album—even if, more often than not, the “band” is considered Welch alone. For it is her personality and general imprint that’s all over their songs, especially this latest outing, colored by the near-death experience Welch had while performing onstage during one of the dates on the Dance Fever Tour in August of 2023. For years afterward, no one seemed to know for sure what, exactly, had happened to her. But during an interview in promotion of Everybody Scream for Apple Music, Welch at last revealed to Zane Lowe that what she had suffered was an ectopic miscarriage.
With that in mind, the album’s cover art makes perfect sense, for it features Welch with her legs opened in a way that is not “sexually suggestive,” so much as a decided visual reference to the position of a woman about to give birth (and yes, it’s fitting that, for women, both having sex and giving birth involve a similar “pose”). Moreover, what does every baby—everybody—do when they first enter the world? Scream. The experience of that painful miscarriage only led Welch deeper down the rabbit hole of seeking answers and information in mysticism and the occult, something that’s never been more evident than it is on this album. For while Welch might have only “dabbled” before, it’s safe to say she’s a real witch now thanks to the offerings on Everybody Scream.
Opening with the title track, the mystical tone is immediately established with the repeated chanting of “ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah” before the raucous rhythm, co-produced by Welch, Mark Bowen, James Ford and Aaron Dessner, breaks out and unleashes something primal. Welch then proceeds to lay it all bare: her love of performing, her earnest belief that the stage is the only place she can be her true, unvarnished self. So it is that she describes a mystical “She” which represents performance itself, singing, “Get on the stage/And I call her by her first name/Try to stay away/But I always meet her back at this place/She gives me everything, I feel no pain I break down, get up and do it all again/Because it’s never enough/And she makes me feel loved/I could come here and scream as loud as I want.” In addition to delineating the way that performance is almost like a kind of magic itself for her, Welch later alludes to her time in the hospital after her health scare, singing, “The witchcraft, the medicine, the spells and the injections/The harvest, the needle protect me from evil/The magic and the misery, madness and the mystery/Oh, what has it done to me?/Everybody scream.” And yet, on another level, “the magic and the misery, madness and the mystery” is also representative of her life as a famous musician. A lifestyle, in fact, that she’s frequently wrestled with in recent years.
This certainly comes across in “One of the Greats,” a roving, stream-of-consciousness kind of track (which began as a poem) that ruminates on, among other things, the double standards that women in the music industry face when compared to men. Ergo, one of the most brilliant and scathing verses of the song, “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/And you could have me if you weren’t so afraid of me/It’s funny how men don’t find power very sexy/So this one’s for the ladies/Do I drive you crazy?/Did I get it right?” Her allusion to almost dying also comes up again in the form of, “Arms outstretched, back from the dead.” A line that, of course, has a very “Jesus’ resurrection” quality to it (even if Welch was actually inspired by Buffy’s resurrection in season six of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer). For what are musicians to their fans if not “Christ-like”?
Her ability to ostensibly “reanimate” only adds to her “supernatural aura.” One that’s further explored on the panting, 90s alt-rock sounding “Witch Dance,” co-produced by Welch, Bowen, Dessner and, now, Danny L Harle. It’s the latter’s influence on the sweltering, tribal sound that stands out as Welch once again speaks on death with the opening verse, “Open my legs, lie down with death/We kiss, we sigh, we sweat/His blackberry mouth stains my nightgown/I pull him close, wrap my legs around/And it tastes like life, I twist, I bite/The foxes chatter in the night” (on a side note, frequent Harle collaborator Caroline Polachek also had something to say about foxes on Charli XCX’s “Everything Is Romantic” remix when she sang, “Sleepyhead ‘cause all the fucking/Foxes kept me awake last night). It’s quite an evocative opening, yet the song only continues to one-up itself with the second verse, all awash in Lana Del Rey language and visuals: “I tear off my nightgown and run naked through the town [LDR would instead say, “I’ve been tearing around in my fucking nightgown”]/Run through rain, run through fog/Taking consolation in cats and dogs and things that cannot speak/Ran to the ancestral plane, but they all showed up drunk and insane/When I asked what I could offer them/They said, ‘Gin and tonic or lithium’/I asked, ‘Which way should I go?’/Through cigarette smoke, they said, ‘Child, how would we know?’”
The absolute odyssey that “Witch Dance” takes the listener on from both an emotional and sonic perspective gives way to the more “radio-friendly” (after all, it’s the third single from the album) “Sympathy Magic.” Bearing the tone of exultation, Welch persists in offering her ruminations on the things that saved her in the aftermath of her brush with death. This including finding mysticism in nature, also telling Lowe, “This record I really just got so much healing, I think, from being in nature… I stayed in a little house [in Hudson Valley]. It was very, like, witch at the edge of the woods.” A variation of that line also appears on the next track, “Perfume and Milk,” with Welch crooning, “In a house in the woods on the edge of town/Bury it deep, swallow it down/Taking the herbs, a laurel crown/Doing the work and sleeping alone.” “The work” in question being to heal, to allow her body what it needed in order to repair and reset after the trauma it endured. As for its somewhat Fleetwood Mac quality (namely, “Landslide,” with all its “time passing” imagery), Welch spoke on cultivating that kind of overall sound for Everybody Scream when she noted, “I wanted to put in lots of natural flora and fauna on this record from, we looked into a lot of folk songs as well because there’s that amazing period of 70s folk where they’re all, like, into the occult” (see: Laurel Canyon).
As for her image-conjuring on this particular track, it once again radiates a kind of “macabre” vibe, especially when she describes, “The falling leaves, the fallen fruit/The rot and the ruin, the earth and the worms/The seasons change, the world turns.” Or, as Stevie Nicks sang, “Can I handle the seasons of my life?” Welch tries to as best she as she can, even while things go back to being more “90s acoustic” on “Buckle,” a title with a dual meaning. On the one hand, the word has the connotation of being part of most “witchy attire” (the shoes, the hats, the belts), but it also applies to Welch buckling under the pressure of her amorous feeling for an aloof object of affection (presumably a fellow musician). This much is made clear when she laments, “‘Cause I’m stupid and I’m damaged, and you’re a disaster [or, as Lily Allen puts it on West End Girl, “It is what it is/You’re a mess/I’m a bitch”]/When you walk into the room, oh, none of it matters Oh, baby, I just buckle my resolution in tatters/‘Cause I know it won’t work, but make it ache, make it hurt/Keep me a secret, choose someone else/I’m still hanging off the buckle on your belt.”
Welch’s candor only intensifies as the song progresses. This, in part, thanks getting some co-songwriting help from Mitski (billed as just “Miyawaki” here). Her stamp on the track is evident in the verse, “You make me think my therapy is a waste of money/Drinking it down/Haunting your city/Falling for anyone awful who tells me I’m pretty/I blocked your number, but you didn’t notice/Oh God, I thought I was too old for this, I should be over it/I’m much too old for this/But I’m not over it.”
To the point of being “too old,” the next song, “Kraken,” kicks off with the line, “Sometimes my body seems so alien to me.” And while Welch might ultimately be likening herself to a kraken a.k.a. the octopus-looking mythical sea monster, there are also elements of the lyrics that speak to the inherent female fear of aging. For example, “Some things it seems are catching up with you.” However, by and large, “Kraken” feels like an allegory for the music industry itself, as well as the kind of “monster” it can turn its talent into. Accordingly, Welch comments, as though from the point of view of both industry and “rock star,” “My tentacles so tender, as I caress your cheek/Did you know how big I would become?/And how much I would eat?/So glamorous and ravenous as I drag you off your feet/There’s nothing you can do.”
A sentiment that appears on “The Old Religion” as well. Mainly, when Welch concedes, “But you can’t outrun yourself, you see/And I’m powerless, oh, don’t remind me.” The slowed down tempo only adds to the dramatic, revelatory nature of the track, which reeks more prominently than others of being produced by Dessner. His piano-laden influence enhances Welch’s Austra-like vocals when she makes such declarations as “And it’s the old religion, but the urge remains the same” and “It’s the old religion humming in your veins/Some animal instinct starting up again.” Nancy Downs from The Craft would probably phrase it another way though: “You know, in the old days, if a witch betrayed her coven, they would kill her.”
Elsewhere, another nod to the physical trauma that keeps haunting her arrives in the line, “Freedom from the body, freedom from the pain” (or, as Arcade Fire once said, “My body is a cage”). Welch, alas, experiences no such freedom. That much is made further evident on “Drink Deep, The Twilight Zone-y intro of which continues to remind the listener that Welch has been kind enough to make them a part of her proverbial coven by sheer virtue of unleashing this album for all to hear. An album that only dives deeper and deeper into the lore of the occult as it goes on. Hence, the depiction that begins “Drink Deep”: “Through bramble and briar/Under ash and oak/I went to find the hidden folk [likely an allusion to fairies of the forest, though Welch may also be referring to witches here as well]/They gave me guns and riches/Cut gold thread with their teeth/And every cup they brought to me/Oh, you know I dared/Drink deep/Drink deep/My eyes began to hollow/My skin began to fade/What I thought was a night was a thousand years/What I thought was a sip was a thousand tears.”
By the end of the incantation, as it were, Welch has the epiphany, “I realized I drank of myself/Yes, it came from me/It was made from me/Still I drank deep.” The implications in this verse are twofold: matriarchal and monstrous. For, on the one hand, Welch is aware of her power as a woman. The power to create life. On the other, there is some aspect that sees this ability—nay, childbirth itself—as something monstrous, gruesome. And, based on her own experience alone, she’s hardly wrong. Nor are her assessments about men and relationships on the cuttingly titled “Music By Men” (featuring an intro that sounds like an Oasis song-meets-America’s “A Horse With No Name”). A phrase that derives from the best line in the song (of which there are many), “Breaking my bones, getting four out of five/Listening to a song by The 1975/I thought, ‘Fuck it/I might as well give music by men a try’” (needless to say Welch’s one-time collaborator, Taylor Swift, no doubt very much approves of such shade aimed at her ex-“boyfriend’s” band).
Throughout the entirety of the song, Welch self-flagellates by addressing her so-called shortcomings vis-à-vis being in a relationship as someone who sees herself as both ego-driven and career-obsessed. The unspoken irony being that men—especially men who are musicians—act exactly this way all the time without so much as a second thought. And without such derisive terms being thrown at them the way they are at women. Here, too, Welch highlights the reality that, if she were a male artist, she likely wouldn’t be having these kinds of remorseful, self-deprecating thoughts at all. Thoughts like, “Picking at your haircut and that stupid band t-shirt/Always thought I was nice, I thought I was kind/Until I tried to do something that was almost real life.”
However, unable to “handle” “doing love” in real life, Welch finds herself constantly “running back to the only love I could ever control.” That is to say, her music—and performing it live. Just like a man in music tends to do the same. Thus, the one-two punch of following up this track with “You Can Have It All” is yet another stroke of brilliance on Everybody Scream. Just as it is to return to the theme of control. Something Welch clearly felt she lost after, well, losing her child. Live onstage. So it is that the need to control something—anything—again shines through via the lyrics, “The season is ripe, I stay in the house/Move the furniture about/Try and control what I can.” Welch delivers another emotional wallop with the line that immediately succeeds this: “And feel the world slip through my hand.”
At around the one-minute, thirty-six-second mark, the song, which has been building in musical tension up to now, bursts forth, further punctuated by Welch belting (no buckle reference intended), “You can have it all/You can have it all.” At first, the vibe one gets is that the “you” is meant to indicate that, yes, a woman can have it all (as Samantha Jones once tried to tell her friends in the “All or Nothing” episode of Sex and the City): career, romance, children. But no, as it turns out, it’s Welch’s sardonic way of saying what Britney Spears already did years ago: “You want a piece of me.” In Welch’s wry manner, she reframes that statement as, “You can have it all/A piece of flesh/A million pounds [a fitting Shakespeare not from an Englishwoman]/Am I a woman now?” The implication being that, in order to be considered a “true” woman, you have to open yourself up to taking abuse without complaining. Accept that to be “real” or “viable” as a woman in a patriarchal society, you must give and give and give without taking. In this sense, too, there’s a reason she’s called Mother Nature. Personified as a woman, constantly giving—being ravaged—without getting much at all in return for her troubles, her ills.
After the overt resentment of the penultimate song, Florence + the Machine concludes this witchly tome with “And Love.” A track that gets right into where the title derives from with the opening verse, “And love was not what I thought it was/It crept up on me despite myself.” Once again alluding to her “prickly pear” ways as “girlfriend material,” Welch further adds, “And love was not what I thought it was/More like an animal crawling deep into a cave/Than a romance heroine being swept away.” In another key moment of the song, Welch repeats, “Peace is coming” like a mantra. This done because, as she mentioned to Lowe during the aforementioned Apple Music interview, she found herself haunted and unnerved by just how much her previous songs (particularly the ones on Dance Fever) turned out to “prophecies” or a form of “manifesting” that she ostensibly invoked.
And so, to that point, she wants, if anything, one incantation of her lyrics, more than any other, to come to fruition in this way: “Peace is coming.” Of course, an assertion like that can be interpreted in plenty of macabre ways (for example, Earth itself finally getting some peace from humans after a nuclear holocaust). But, in any event, it’s generous of Welch to attempt using her witchly powers for good in this regard. Indeed, with Everybody Scream, Welch has rightfully earned herself the honorary title of Florence the Good Witch. Even if she insists that the majority of her songwriting comes from a place of just trying to rhyme words together…
