WORTH A LOOK?: ****

Tracklist: Everybody Scream; One Of The Greats; Witch Dance; Sympathy Magic; Perfume And Milk; Buckle; Kraken; The Old Religion; Drink Deep; Music By Men; You Can Have It All; And Love

‘The closest I came to making life was the closest I came to death,’ says lead singer Florence Welch. ‘And I felt like I had stepped through this door, and it was just full of women, screaming.’

• Read on for reasons including how this can lay claim to Welch’s most personal album to date

Welch told The Guardian in an interview that in August 2023 she had a miscarriage onstage during an ectopic pregnancy where the fertilised egg had implanted in a fallopian tube, rather than the uterus. The fallopian tube then ruptured, causing massive internal bleeding.

Two years ago, she and her boyfriend – a British guitarist in an indie band, whom she prefers not to name, as she is protective of his privacy – decided that they would try to have a baby. ‘It was my first experience of even trying to get pregnant, and I thought, there’s no way, because I’m ancient.’ She was about to turn 37.

It’s this album’s later songs where the horror of what has happened is brought home not least on the choral, multi-layered vocals of Kraken where Welch reflects: ‘Sometimes my body seems so alien to me … As the water rises up around me.’

Even assuming some responsibility for the horror she is about to inflict while musing: ‘And all of my peers, they had such potential … I kissed them all and let them drown. You didn’t see me, just another drunken groupie.’

You Can Have It All is particularly reflective: ‘Caught in a vision of my daughter. Light a candle, place my grief upon the altar.’

The mood continues throughout And Love: ‘And Love was not what I thought it was … and it was not a love song, it was something else. More like surrendering to something and more like resting than running.’

One Of The Greats was a song of the month for us earlier this year. Its themes are echoed in new song Music By Men where Welch pleads: ‘Let me put out a record and not have it ruin my life.’

Everybody Scream can lay claim to Welch’s most personal album to date.

We can’t wait to see her perform with her band at a UK and European tour early next year including gigs at London’s The 02.

• Main pictures via Facebook courtesy Florence And The Machine Tickets
• Have you seen a Florence show before and what did you think of this song? Let us know what you thought in the comments below
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