""The closest I came to making life was the closest I came to death," Florence Welch told The Guardian last month. She was referencing a miscarriage that she experienced in August 2023, flush in the middle of a European tour with Florence + the Machine; an ectopic pregnancy forced Welch into emergency surgery, which saved her life. "I felt like I had stepped through this door, and it was just full of women, screaming.""
"For six albums and 15 years now, Welch has built her artistry on a kind of ritual self-destruction: the barefoot sprinting across stages, the operatic wailing, the physical and emotional exorcism that defines a Florence + the Machine performance. She broke her foot at Coachella in 2015, pushed through it, kept going. The emergency surgery finally forced her to stop. And yet, the new album born from the stillness of recovery is about the irresistible pull back to the very thing that nearly killed her."
"That thin line between life and death also speaks to a larger battle in Welch's life and career: the threshold between her body and its limits, the tension of being a woman and an artist in a world that regularly discounts both. On Everybody Scream, Welch interrogates herself with newfound specificity and higher stakes, resulting in some of the most honest epiphanies and sharpest writing of her career."
Florence Welch experienced a miscarriage and an ectopic pregnancy during an August 2023 European tour that required emergency surgery and nearly cost her life. Recovery produced Everybody Scream, an album born from stillness that channels trauma into operatic catharsis and a pull back toward performance. Welch's artistry over six albums has centered on ritual self-destruction, physical spectacle, and emotional exorcism through barefoot stage sprints and operatic wailing. The emergency surgery forced a halt but clarified a compulsion to perform the same rituals that risked her health. The album interrogates bodily limits, the tensions of being a woman and an artist, and shows sharper, more specific self-awareness while retaining mythic, bloodletting imagery and cathartic intensity.
Read at Consequence
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