Normally, a video of your favorite singer ferociously digging a hole in the ground in a grassy meadow and then screaming into the void as if exorcising a demon would be cause for concern. But for fans of Florence + the Machine, the new clip featuring singer Florence Welch shouting her angst into the dirt is actually a great sign.
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Though Welch has not yet announced it, admirers of the band believe the primal scream video is part of the ramping-up promotion for the group’s as-yet-unannounced follow-up to 2022’s Dance Fever album.
The howl into the void teaser comes after F+TM began to spark speculation about a new LP last month via a series of cryptic images titled “toil and trouble.” The first slide in the post had a heading of “October” above a Bosch-like image of a naked woman kneeling in the dirt under a full moon. It was followed by a pic of Welch working with IDLES guitarist Mark Bowen in the studio, a whiteboard with the message “You can have it all,” followed by the list of terms: “Clarity — Power, Purpose, Vocals!!!, Space, Dynamics, Beauty, Swans vs. Adele.”
The carousel also spotlighted philosopher Simon Critchley’s 2024 book about the transformative experience of mysticism, On Mysticism: The Experience of Ecstacy, a sheet of paper with the words “witchcraft, folk horror, mysticism, magic, poetry and insanity” scrawled on it and a page from the 1926 satirical English novel Lolly Willowes.
A follow-up post on July 17 included a glam shot of the singer smiling in one of her signature flowy dresses, the trailer to the classic Mia Farrow 1968 horror flick Rosemary’s Baby, the cover of the book The Truth About Witchcraft Today, a shot of a pile of books including Sylvia Plath’s landmark novel, The Bell Jar, as well as the Penguin Book of Spiritual Verses, a clip from the sex horror film It Follows and other spooky images.
The tease continued over the weekend with a post titled “Drink Deep,” comprised of the sign for the Drink Deep Tavern (established 1667), a brief clip of a four-woman choir recording backing vocals, the cover of Damnable Tales: A Folk Horror Anthology and what appeared to be a clutch of lyrics that presaged the hole shouting: “Thrust my fists in the ground/ And the earth made a moaning sound/ I could feel something shudder/ Deeper, deeper down.”
The speculation about the new album has been accompanied by a recent revamp of the band’s official website, which was wiped and updated with a landing page spotlighting a cryptic rune featuring two capital T’s along with four surrounding moon phases over a picture of a windswept field.
At press time a spokesperson for Welch had not returned Billboard‘s request for additional information on the teaser posts.
Check out Welch’s dirt shouting video below.
