Florence Welch had yet to appear when the screaming started. Not from the overwhelmingly female, surprisingly young capacity crowd at the OVO Hydro in Glasgow, but from behind curtains suspended from the ceiling shielding a long walkway. A shifting spotlight gave glimpses of a woman maybe being mauled. It was half Psycho shower scene, a tad Tales of the Unexpected.

Dramatic entrances are not new for Florence + the Machine but as the curtains were sucked up into the sky something did feel different. For starters, Welch was smiling. Arms aloft, the draped sleeves of her floaty, floor-length dress fluttering alongside her, she looked as happy to be there as the fans now chanting her name.

Since the global success of their debut album, 2009’s multimillion-seller Lungs, Florence + the Machine have never been less than spectacular live. Yet their flame-haired frontwoman can be a chilly proposition, often seemingly lost in her own witchy world.

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What’s changed? Six albums in and at almost 40 — a milestone she has claimed she can’t wait to reach — Welch is perhaps just more relaxed. Yet there’s likely more to it. Last year’s chart-topper Everybody Scream, the band’s best album in a decade, suggested that the singer has finally got to grips with fame.

There was humour here alongside horror, notably references to Welch’s near death on stage in 2023, when she performed with an undiagnosed ectopic pregnancy that ruptured, causing internal bleeding. Yet even the darkest songs were delivered with joy and, crucially, backed by a dialled-down, five-piece band — sometimes just drums and soft synths, occasionally only acoustic guitar and the band’s trademark harp.

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The opener, Everybody Scream, incited a mass singalong during which Welch, barefoot and on tiptoes, skipped and twirled. Four dancers in Wuthering Heights-style cloaks, petticoats and clumpy boots spun in circles or crawled through a sea of dry ice to surround the star.

On a momentous Shake It Out, the dancers became a choir. A strung-out Seven Devils was delivered like a spooky murder mystery narrated by Welch, while One of the Greats was dedicated “to the ladies” and brought the house down. Sure, Welch still wailed and lost some connection with us — on the guts-spilling Big God, she was part Patti Smith, part person possessed — but she bumped back down to earth every time she stopped to talk.

“Please don’t film me drinking water,” she begged. “People aren’t supposed to know that I’m human.” Before a beautiful acoustic version of Buckle, she admitted that the song was about a love interest not texting her back: “Sing it with me and share my shame.”

At the end of the set and the start of the encore, Welch was in among the crowd, hugging and high-fiving. A distant performer? Not any more.
★★★★★

Florence + the Machine setlist at OVO Hydro, Glasgow, Feb 9

1. Everybody Scream
2. Witch Dance
3. Shake It Out
4. Seven Devils
5. Big God
6. Daffodil
7. Which Witch
8. Cosmic Love
9. Spectrum
10. You Can Have It All
11. Music by Men
12. Buckle
13. King
14. The Old Religion
15. Howl
16. Heaven Is Here
17. Sympathy Magic
18. One of the Greats
19. Dog Days
20. Free
21. And Love