-State Farm Arena, Atlanta, 5.1.2026
A Florence + the Machine show is a pop-up goddess commune in a basketball arena, a feminist flash-mob for the jumbotron. This feels like a different reality from the televised tyranny of throwback male chauvinism, & it’s an alternate reality with fashion, flair, & flowers.
Florence is as floral as this first of May, & as for Florence, so for the fandom. It seems almost everyone is festooned in flowy skirts & scarves & decorative crowns. Florence has done her research & has lived the gender & religious references in her songs. She is fully channeling 14th century visionary mystic Julian of Norwich to confront the patriarchy with bloody facts. The facts are this: fiercely ferocious poetic vulnerability & healing honesty & loving intimacy will always redeem more deeply than the bad trad daddies, their bad authoritarian theology, & their terrifying Handmaid's Tale reenactment society.
Female mysticism is such a fierce flame, especially in these outta sorts hypermasculine times. Whether these feral femmes are witchy witchy woo woo or old school Christian mystics matters not to the fallen Church of white nationalism, which is not seeking Christ but cosplaying Caesar. They don’t care if you are nice or a nun or a heretical heathen, they just want to legislate your lady parts. Just look how they did Bishop Budde.
I think it also should be noted, other than an announcement on the big screens about the band’s support for Doctors Without Borders, the so-called “politics” of tonight were poetically implied, not overtly preached. (We are seeing Springsteen in this same room the next day, where from what I have heard, lots of political preaching will transpire).
For the entire set, we are hers, this dervish twirling ginger Stevie Nicks, this high priestess of the poetic moan, this mezzo-soprano matron of the art rock high mass. Whether we are asked to jump & wave our arms or to put away our phones, we are more than overjoyed to synchronize & alchemize. The crowd are dancing like the choreographed collective of ensemble dancers, because we are all one bigger collective, one ever expansive ensemble. It’s amazing to me how fandoms fill the gaps when our traditional gathering places feel bereft of the very heft that initiated their existence in the first place & what a fandom this Florence framily is, one that defies & includes every genre in a deep catalog of relentless reverie.
Confession: When 2025’s Everybody Scream didn’t instantly sweep me away like 2022’s Dance Fever did, I sort of set my Florence listening aside to make room for other deep digs in the vast array that’s always competing for the queue on my Bose headphone itinerary. But what I was ignoring was further exploration of deeply transformational & timeless story scriptures of sizzling revelation. Now, finally, opening up to this experience in person, songs like “Sympathy Magic” or “Perfume and Milk” or “The Old Religion” or the raw takedown of the music industry’s mediocre men in “One of The Greats,” these tracks left track marks in my body-mind-spirit.
Mayday has always meant a lot to me. I am attracted to the history of the labor movement & the homage to the Chicago Haymarket martyrs of the late 19th century. I also love the bawdy springtime celebrations of the celtic holy day Beltane. It was tripping on booze & shrooms at the latter, that my addiction to numerous substances finally bottomed out in 2009, interestingly just two months before Florence’s debut album dropped that summer.
Through lots of surrender & willingness & working with others, I have not had a reason to drink ever since. So now, every May first, I not only acknowledge those larger traditions, I remember how I almost lost all connections to everything through daily self-abuse. So on this Mayday some 17 years after, it was these lines from “Never Let Me Go” on 2011’s Ceremonials that utterly broke me into a bawling dancing puddle of weeping gratitude.
And the arms of the ocean are carrying me
And all this devotion was rushing out of me
And the crashes are heaven for a sinner like me
But the arms of the ocean delivered me
I know I am not the only person who cries at a Florence concert, & I know that the depth of connections we feel in such a bold communal experience are different for each of us. I know that my deeper gentler understanding of my own masculinity benefits from these brave expressions of femininity that I saw at this show all around me. It’s a multitude of gardens that we need, not a monoculture of conformity, so even as folks were communally vibey in their similarly sheer fabrics & flowery accessories, it is truly a garden where anything & everything that is loving & peaceful & good can grow.
-Andrew/Sunfrog, Teacher On The Radio
-photos are from a previous show, from the artist’s official social media
