Florence + The Machine Review – A dramatic shift in tone towards stark and sombre catharsis | music

‘I“I’ve only sung this once before and it makes me shiver,” admits Florence Welch, sitting alone at the far end of a long, narrow propulsion stage. Watching her dominate this arena during the first of two sold-out shows in Glasgow in honor of Florence + The Machine’s sixth studio album Everybody’s Screaming, it’s hard to imagine Welch being afraid of anything. Just seconds before, she’d been racing around barefoot, billowing skirts gathered in one hand, tearing through Spectrum (the band’s first UK No. 1, in 2012) and her fervent demand: “Say my name!”

But the new song she’s preparing herself to sing hits a bruise. With soaring intensity, You Can Have It All, mourning the ectopic pregnancy that nearly killed her, as well as the music industry that punishes its stars for motherhood. Over a raspy electric guitar, her stormy voice billows like sails in the wind: “Am I a woman now?” He leaves the arena in stunned silence. She gives a sarcastic bow.

“Everybody’s Screaming” deals with familiar Florence tropes—mountain vibes, thundering drums, shimmering harp—but with a new melancholy, especially as it grapples with questions of legacy. In previous songs she rages against metaphorical demons. Now, in “One of the Greats,” her goals become clearer as she stares at her male peers making “boring music” and sings, her face screwed up with frustration, about what it would take to “conquer and crucify.”

With her longtime band The Machine performing in the shadows, Welch accompanies a chorus that writhes, screams and tears at their foam skirts. This highly dramatic spectacle can never be boring, but it threatens to overwhelm: the choral folklore pulls the focus away from a performer who could stun an audience single-handedly, so easily.

Last year’s single Sympathy Magic is a Florentine classic: a sky-high plea for catharsis through song. “What’s next?” She screamed before throwing herself into the arms of a fan on the barricade. It makes the pain so relatable and the love feel intentionally anticlimactic. He is gentle and calm about finding peace. “If we sang it, it could come true,” she says, but Welch, like her audience, thrives on the edge.