Considering it's 2025, everyone could use a rage-filled scream—and Florence + Car here to deliver.
The band returns with their sixth album. Everyone's screaminga large-scale epic dedicated to the construction of self-mythology. Drawing on their signature complex, melodramatic sound, they explore the depths of anger and its many manifestations – revenge, resentment, regret, contempt. Some of the songs are sometimes weighed down by complex theatrics, but the record's complex feminist themes and edgy lyricism feel appropriate given the global backsliding on women's rights.
Everyone's screaming In many ways, the album is about grief, as lead singer Florence Welch wrote most of the songs after losing her pregnancy. Welch's mourning is characterized not by sadness, but by anger that the Universe is not allowing her to simultaneously achieve success in her career and personal life. The band's previous album, 2022 Dance feverexplored similar themes of catharsis; Everyone's screaming continues the conversation, but this time filled with righteous indignation, as if furious that I am still facing the same obstacles.
Sonically, this record revisits many elements from the 2011 album. Ceremonies – soaring choral backing vocals, organs and harps, hints of spirituality and the supernatural – but 14 years of experience have brought great benefit to the band: the sound is clearer, the harmonies grander, and the arrangements more layered. Welch's vocals have extra reverb, as if reminiscent of an empty concert hall or cathedral, and she occasionally stumbles out of bounds, grounding the arrangements to mimic the raw passion of an unpolished live performance.
A couple of tracks are crowded and incoherent as the theatrical cacophony obscures intent and meaning in a way that's more exhausting than intriguing. But for the most part, the album's depth and texture provide a refreshing contrast to the industry's current hyper-polished pop moment, and the complexity of the arrangements is essential to highlighting the extent of Welch's vulnerability and fury.
Never one to shy away from creating her own mythology, Welch portrays herself as a cowboy, a rock star, a monster and a god throughout the album. On the album's second track, “One of the Greats”, she personifies a vengeful cryptid, brought back from the dead to mock the male tastemakers who refuse to acknowledge her talent; in The Kraken, she is a sea monster who avenges victims seen as collateral damage to a cruel man's success. Meanwhile, the dark “Drink Deep” sees the frontwoman as a demon, devouring herself in exchange for immortality and power.
Welch is at her least disguised on the brilliant penultimate track “You Can Have It All,” where she bemoans the platitudes told to ambitious women with chilling vocal prowess. In this confrontational elegy, she mourns both the loss of her child and her belief in what her life could have been. Despite all these changing characteristics, the truth of Welch's narrative shines through the layers of poetic metaphor.
While the sound isn't new territory for the band, Everyone's screaming proves its worth with the timeliness and visceral honesty of Welch's lyricism and delivery, adding significantly to the cultural conversation about gender roles and female rage. The album is both grounded in real life and vibrantly transportive—a refreshing and compelling balance that few can pull off quite like Florence + the Machine.
