FLORENCE WELCH 'ANXIETY IS THE HUM OF MY LIFEUNTIL I STEP ON STAGE'

If you talk to Florence Welch on any given day, it’s safe to assume she’s feeling a little anxious.

- By BRITTANY SPANOS

“Anxiety is the constant hum of my life,” she says. “Then I step out onstage, and it goes away.” Luckily, that’s where she is right now: draped in a long white dress, sitting comfortably in front of a 150-person audience at New York’s beautiful Cherry Lane Theatre, a storied downtown venue known as the birthplace of off-Broadway theatre. It’s a week before the release of Everybody Scream, the excellent sixth album she made with her band, Florence + the Machine

• During the interview and a stripped-down, spellbinding performance, the energy in the room is as electric as the new album - even when the subject matter is not necessarily light. Made with collaborators like the National’s Aaron Dessner, IDLES’ Mark Bowen, Mitski, and James Ford, Everybody Scream is a visceral and mystical reflection on life and loss, not to mention a showcase for Welch’s remarkable voice, which has proved to be one of the most powerful instruments in popular music since her band debuted in 2009. The songs were spurred by her experiences touring in support of 2022’s Dance Fever, where she suffered an ectopic pregnancy and ruptured fallopian tube that required lifesaving emergency surgery.

Throughout the conversation, Welch balances a deep candour with a dry wit while analysing the ways she’s evolved over the years, and what it’s meant for her music. “The calmer my life got, the wilder I could be in my performance styles and in my videos and in my artwork,” she surmises, midway through our talk. “I found that freedom from shame means that you can explore so many more different things in your work, and I really found that to be amazing.”

I guess in a way Dance Fever was a record of prophecy and this record is a record of catastrophe. [