Florence Welch has a new album out — Scream, released on Halloween — and in press interviews ahead of the release she’s been talking about the visual and cultural references that shaped it. As a Buffy fan, one particular quote jumped out.
Talking about the aesthetic world she wanted to create for the record, Florence described channelling Mary Shelley and the Brontë sisters through the lens of nineties cult classics — specifically naming The Craft and Buffy the Vampire Slayer as touchstones. Her goal was something she described as “Georgian and grunge, all at once” — that strange, floating space between the 1880s and the 1980s where folk horror and gothic romance blur into each other.
Honestly, that’s one of the more accurate descriptions of what Buffy actually felt like to grow up watching. It was never purely one thing — it was Victorian mythology and California high school and genuine emotional weight, all happening at the same time. The fact that Florence Welch has internalised that as part of her creative vocabulary feels right.
The album is built around folk horror and the Gothic Romantic tradition — she’s talked about deep dives into documentary films about folk horror across Europe and America, vintage clothing obsessions during lockdown, references to Julian of Norwich and supernatural short fiction. Buffy fits neatly into that lineage. The show was always more interested in fairy tale and myth than it was in straightforward horror.
The visuals for the album lean into all of this — Edwardian bustles, vintage pieces, prairie dresses, see-through nightgowns. Very much the vibe.
Scream by Florence + the Machine is out now.
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