It begins with, well, screaming to a glam rock beat, as if The Sweet were recast in an alternative reality as a gaggle of witches on the run from the pitchfork mob (and I don’t mean the furrowed-brow masturbatory music publication, though that works too). ‘Blood on the stage,’ Florence Welch sings, ‘But how can I leave you when you’re screaming my name?’ This is self-affirmation writ large, a reassertion of her shaman priestess image - Patti Smith crossed with the Melisandre from Game of Thrones - who is coming for her audience, “A bouquet of brambles, all twisted and tangled/I’ll make you singe for me, I’ll make you scream.”
This is the title track to Everybody Scream, and shows a musician regaining her confidence and attitude after what has been a troubled period away for her, and exhorting her legions of followers to rise up to meet her... and if the post-Florence crop of Victorian-dress female warriors acts like The Last Dinner Party and Paris Paloma are anything to go by, we’re talking Lord of the Rings hordes here.
