Florence Welch has never been one to shy away from the visceral, the theatrical, or the spiritual. With the announcement of her sixth studio album, Everybody Scream – out 31st October – she once again invites listeners into a world that feels both intimate and unearthly. The news arrives today with the release of the record’s title track, accompanied by a striking video directed by Autumn de Wilde. IDLES’ Mark Bowen, who also contributed musically to the project, appears in the surreal visual, hinting at the collaborative spirit underpinning the album.
Florence + The Machine
Written and produced across the last two years, Everybody Scream finds Welch working in close creative partnership with Bowen, The National’s Aaron Dessner, and alt-pop visionary Mitski. The album was born from an intensely personal chapter: midway through the Dance Fever world tour, Welch was forced to cancel shows and undergo emergency, life-saving surgery. The ordeal not only altered her relationship with her own body but also shaped the themes of her new music.
Florence + the Machine @ Brixton Academy
Where 2022’s Dance Fever explored ecstatic release through dance and folklore, Everybody Scream journeys inward. Florence immersed herself in spiritual mysticism, witchcraft and folk horror while recuperating, exploring what it means to be “healed” – physically, emotionally, and spiritually. The record treads through universal yet rarely confronted experiences: the shifting landscapes of womanhood, the fragility of partnership, the inevitability of aging, and the shadow of mortality. Welch describes it as an excavation of “the murky in the mundane” – a reminder that even the most everyday human moments are haunted by mystery.
The album’s first offering, the title track, captures that tension. Opening with a tremor of restraint before exploding into cathartic release, Everybody Scream is at once feral and reflective, a cry from the pit of the stomach that somehow becomes a hymn. De Wilde’s accompanying video heightens the sense of uncanny domesticity slipping into ritualistic spectacle, positioning Welch once again as a high priestess of modern alternative music.
Since emerging with 2009’s Lungs, Florence + The Machine has been one of the most singular voices in contemporary music. With her volcanic vocal presence and flair for the mythic, Welch has cultivated a body of work that straddles art-pop, baroque rock, and gothic folk. Albums such as 2011’s Ceremonials and 2015’s How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful cemented her as an artist who could command the intimacy of headphones and the vastness of stadiums alike. Her subsequent records, High As Hope (2018) and Dance Fever (2022), further expanded her reputation as a songwriter unafraid of vulnerability, reckoning with sobriety, love, loss, and creative rebirth.
Florence + the Machine for Teenage Cancer Trust 2012 @ Royal Albert Hall
Beyond the studio, Florence has become renowned for her live performances – sweeping, physical rituals in which she channels intensity with near-mystical devotion. She has headlined Glastonbury, Coachella, and countless festivals worldwide, her shows often blurring the boundary between rock concert and collective spiritual experience. Collaborations with artists as wide-ranging as The Rolling Stones, Lady Gaga, and Taylor Swift underscore her singular place at the intersection of pop stardom and alternative artistry. Her 2018 book, Useless Magic, compiled lyrics, poetry, and sketches, offering further insight into her richly imaginative inner world.
Florence + The Machine @ BST Hyde Park 2019
Everybody Scream thus arrives not only as the next chapter in Florence + The Machine’s discography but also as a statement of survival and transformation. If Dance Fever was about surrendering to life’s ecstasies, Everybody Scream is about grappling with its limits – and discovering new forms of power within them. With collaborators like Dessner and Mitski helping to shape its edges, the album is likely to expand her sonic palette while staying true to the elemental power at her core.
As Welch herself has hinted, Everybody Scream is not a retreat but a charge forward. The 31st October release date – Halloween – seems fitting: a night when the veil between worlds is thinnest, when transformation and ritual reign. Fans can expect an album that howls at the boundaries of the body and the spirit, a work both unsettling and strangely comforting in its honesty.
Florence + The Machine @ Theatre Royal
With the title track now available to stream and the album up for preorder, attention inevitably turns to whether Florence + The Machine will return to the stage to bring Everybody Scream to life. Given Welch’s reputation as one of the most powerful live performers of her generation, the prospect of hearing these songs in the flesh feels as essential as the record itself.
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