FLORENCE + THE MACHINE – "Everybody Scream"

FLORENCE-THE-MACHINE-album-coverEverybody-Scream-

Ladies and gentlemen, she's back. The fiery-haired lady who seems to live in past times and lost places is finally here again.

Between grace and energy, delicacy and boldness, pain (a lot) and redemption, Florence announces her arrival with a cry, and invites us to join her.

“Everybody Scream” is the sixth studio album by the London group Florence + The Machine, a precious treasure chest to be opened gracefully, but without hesitation, to release and spread into the air a story in 12 tracks in which the singer has placed a story of loss and discovery. A journey of such disarming intensity that one almost feels like an “intrusive” spectator in front of so much life.

A life that Florence herself, as she said, risked losing due to a serious complication due to a miscarriage, followed by internal bleeding that brought her to the brink of death. From this oblivion, which for her was actually a light that only immensely profound people can see in an unfortunate event, Florence took on the appearance of a witch and wrote, reaffirming her position as a woman fighting against prejudice, discrimination, the difficulty of making her voice heard: for this reason, the scream comes.

“Everybody Scream” is a record about the body, about his body, whose cry exudes from every pore and becomes a perpetual litany that insinuates itself into the head – and heart – of those who listen to it. The gothic and horror echoes can be perceived in every corner of this album – which she herself defines as “folk horror” which not at all coincidentally keeps us company starting from Halloween. Magic, rituals, spells, occultism is everything that makes up the imagery that Florence turned to in the moment following the experience of extra-uterine pregnancy, to rediscover meaning and explore the concept of healing from all points of view, beyond any scientific and rational practice.

Florence does not allow herself a soft and silent entrance: we hear the scream – literally – immediately, in the title track “Everybody Scream”, in which we imagine her on stage, wild and pure (“Here and I don't have to be quiet, here I don't have to be kind, but how can I leave you when you're screaming my name), exactly like in “One of The Greats”, a song on the paradoxical dichotomy given by the mortality of the body versus the immortality of glory, but above all a (new) cry of self-affirmation that expresses the frustration of a musical world that excludes women.

The co-presence of death and life is affirmed in the song “Witch Dance”, the gothic dance of a witch who bewitches by inviting us to cross a threshold beyond which the darkness unfolds which at first sight terrifies, but which we then become friends with. The intensity and introspection increase in “Perfume and Milk”, in which Florence narrates the nature that welcomed her following the traumatic event, and the change that occurred in her together with the changes in the landscape. She enters more into the terrain of feelings and relationships in “Buckle” and “Music By Men”, moving on to the dark and dark text imbued with mystical atmospheres of “The Old Religion”, up to reflecting on herself, her own condition and self-recognition in “You Can Have It All” and “Kraken”. And the conclusion, “And Love” is a hymn to rebirth, to positivity, to love which probably, as in the best of fairy tales, is the best cure for the wounds of the soul.

Because if healing – within oneself – is what Florence urgently sought, we can finally say it: you don't need to be a witch to find the strength to heal yourself. Maybe, it's enough just to be born a woman

TO LISTEN NOW

Everybody Scream – Perfume and Milk – And Love

TO BE SKIPPED IMMEDIATELY

None, none!

SCORE: 8.00

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