When the air gets colder and the days feel a little shorter, I like to reflect the change of season in the music I’m listening to. Florence + The Machine’s newly released album “Everybody Scream” came at a perfect time for me to welcome fall energy.
Florence Welch, the front woman of this act, is always able to pull me in with the tone and energy of her music. She often features instruments such as harps and strings that make the songs feel like they could be the soundtrack to a fairytale or haunted Victorian-era story. There is something so magical and beautiful about the arrangements that really pull me in.
The music and instrumentation itself are incredible, but when paired with her distinct voice, it really comes to life. Her voice is so strong and powerful in some moments and soft and melodic in the next. In a recent interview Florence said that she has been doing opera vocal training, and the training is noticeable in this album; you can hear the steadiness and confidence in her voice even as she covers very personal subject matter.
Throughout the album, she sings hauntingly about love, her relationship with music, performing and her recent health struggles. She talks about how she feels being a woman in her mid-30s and how the world expects so much of her, how we long to know her opinions on everything from motherhood to fellow musicians. She revealed in interviews and through the lyrics of this album, that while on her last tour she suffered a miscarriage, an event that left her deathly ill and questioning what she wanted out of life.
The opening track, “Everybody Scream,” features a chorus of screams, chilling vocals and ad-libs as Florence tells the audience to scream along and reveals why she is coming back to the stage after such a life-changing event. She says the stage makes her feel whole and fulfilled; how while performing she gains the strength and courage to talk and sing about uncomfortable topics she would normally struggle with. This track is a perfect opener that clears the air as to why she is here and sets the tone for the rest of the songs.
The next song I want to highlight is “One of the Greats,” the longest song on the album and one of the longest in her discography. I love long songs because there is space for both instruments and storytelling to really shine.
The song opens with guitars and bass that give the song a very dark and dramatic flair, a feeling that complements the female rage Florence sings about. She comes across so confident and powerful as she sings about moving forward in her career, and how she longs to have her music taken as seriously as her male peers.’ She is angry that she loves giving herself over to an industry that has constantly overlooked her.
She takes a jab at the men in the music industry stating, “It must be nice to be a man and make boring music just because you can.” This is the first time we’ve heard Florence be funny and direct in this way, and I really love it. She complains that she and other women make arguably better music than some of the top male musicians, but at the end of the day will never be taken as seriously.
Another track that stands out to me (one of my favorites, up there with “One of the Greats”) is “You Can Have It All.”
Florence returns to her classic sound of grandiose, long belting notes and crescendos of instruments as she sings the lyrics “you can have it all.”
She tells us how she is willing to give it all up, if the world could take the grief she holds for her baby. It’s heartbreaking and beautiful all at the same time. In this song, it sounds like she has hope for the future and that things will look up but also acknowledges her feelings of grief as an important step.
Overall, I think this is one of the strongest Florence + The Machine albums yet. Sonically, the music sounds great like it always does, and the lyrics and songwriting are painfully honest, but that’s what makes me love it. This album is haunting, therapeutic and absolutely beautiful to listen to.
