By Neil Durham

WORTH A LOOK?: ****

WHEN?: Monday 16 February and runs through August 2026

Setlist: Everybody Scream; Witch Dance; Shake It Out; Seven Devils; Big God; Daffodil; Which Witch?; Cosmic Love; Spectrum; You Can Have It All; Music By Men; Buckle; King; The Old Religion; Howl; Heaven Is Here; Sympathy Magic; One Of The Greats; Dog Days Are Over; Free; And Love

Two and a half years ago Florence Welch had an ectopic pregnancy onstage and it’s an experience that informs current album Everybody Scream and gives added weight to her closing chant of ‘Peace is coming’ from final song tonight And Love.

• Read on for reasons including how Florence’s fans are in debt to her for sharing such honest and raw truths

And Love is the final track on the new album and boasts an almost revelatory lyric of self discovery: ‘And Love was not what I thought it was. More like an animal crawling deep into a cave Than a romance novel heroine being swept away.’

Elsewhere in this magnificent near 2-hour set Welch appears very much the romance novel heroine influenced by Kate Bush and Tori Amos in a blood red dress backed by interpretative female dancers as well as her band.

The set spans her entire career but it’s the honesty of The Guardian interview and related material where she explains she had a miscarriage during an ectopic pregnancy where the fertilised egg had implanted in a fallopian tube, rather than the uterus that puts this show into context. The fallopian tube then ruptured, causing massive internal bleeding.

‘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.’

‘I was scared to come back to this building,’ she even says at 1 point to this crowd as she appears to be discussing blood onstage before reinforcing her south London, and particularly Camberwell, local connections.

This is, we think, our 9th Florence and The Machine gig and the reason we keep returning is because she always delivers live.

We stand as far back on the arena floor as we can to test whether, even this far back from the devoted throng at the barrier, Welch’s best songs can still touch us – and they do.

A gay male couple in front of us embrace and a man dressed in a floaty, swirly yellow dress which lights up is spinning to the music, appearing to have the time of his life (see above).

We marvel at the strength in depth of the material with early tracks 7 Devils and Big God being used to great effect in recent TV shows.

Returning to tread the boards after her onstage lost pregnancy is brave and her fans are in debt to Florence for sharing such honest and raw truths.

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