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After months of build-up, this announcement marks the first official unpolished preview since the release of the title track ‘Everybody Scream’ earlier this summer, on August 20, 2025. The resounding impression left by this initial glimpse at the new album was one of theatrical intensity and haunting emotional depth, channeling a type of tension caught between a performance persona and internal vulnerability. This marks her dramatic return to the music scene following a life-threatening emergency in 2023; a return that is marked by captivating directness yet unshakeably underpinned by chaos.

In contrast to this poignant and polished first album release single, the footage shared on the band’s social media channels proves to be a glimpse of something more visceral and immediate.

Earlier this year, Florence Welch shared an aesthetic and auditory mood board, marking her intent with the production of the upcoming album. Alongside the help of featured collaborators, like Mark Bowen (of ‘Idles’) , the overwhelming creative vision was one of “witchcraft, folk horror, mysticism, magic, poetry [and] insanity“. Although the creative details of ‘One of the Greats’ remain limited so far, the looser, stripped-back production in this smaller clip suggests the album’s later releases seek to tilt further into this thematically sinister idea.

The audio teasers also accompany an aesthetic anticipation of the album’s release, with the band’s social media channels again curating a type of mysticism, poetic narrative – posting surreal photography, with clips of Welch screaming in a field and marked in imagery seeped in folklore or witchcraft-esque ideas.

 

 

 

 

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As October approaches, bringing with it the last month countdown to Florence + The Machine’s new album, the energy and marked return to Welch’s music career bring with it an increasing anticipation for the album as a whole. Fans have been left in chilling suspense as they await the twelve-track album to be released on Halloween, including a deluxe edition with additional chamber-versions of four songs. With Halloween fast approaching, ‘One of the Greats’ offers a tantalising hint of the tone Florence + The Machine are preparing to unveil.

our new 6 song EP ‘maserati anxiety designed’ is out today everywhere – in this life and the next. it’s a M.A.D world nowhttps://t.co/D86JRhHSOc pic.twitter.com/E3CFI46KMs

— Halloweens (@halloweensband) August 21, 2020

Maserati Anxiety Designed has a slick, low-key, synth vibe, in contrast to the vintage pop sound of Morning Kiss at the Acropolis. What the two records have in common is a vast amount of talent – we shouldn’t make the mistake of thinking of this as ‘just’ a side project, because it’s as tight and curated as anything. ‘Creative outlet’ is a far more appropriate term; you can really tell that Justin Young just has songs spilling out of him. And Timothy Lanham has a really exciting angle to give to them.

Thinking about side projects, this is what Young told The Line Of Best Fit: “The Vaccines are the great love of my life – it changed everything for me. It’s the thing I lose sleep over, the thing I think about all morning and night, it’s the main and most important thing in our lives. But when you’re in a band for almost ten years with four other people, you do have to collaborate and compromise.”

Maserati Anxiety Designed, the title track, is tightly controlled, switching between its urgent verses and then slowing down for the refrain “I hate how quickly you can change your mind.” Its best lyric is “Try to destroy it / Helen of Troy it” – there’s that line, and the Acropolis setting of the first album, and then (possibly the record’s best moment) “you’re well versed in all of the classics / Roman, Greek and Reebok too” in ‘Divinity Pools’. It’s making me think I want to have a great conversation with Justin Young about ancient Greece.

‘Divinity Pools’ was the first teaser single, released earlier this year, and it’s a real highlight of the record. Its other great moment is “I feel like I could cry / streaming on demand / but it’s so off brand.” This is the video, an ode to lockdown in London and Australia (where Lanham has been since March). There’s a lot of running.

The other real highlight of Maserati Anxiety Designed is ‘Lonely Boy Forever’, the second single (released July 24). I’d say this one grows and grows – it’s good at first, but it’s great after a few listens. ‘Lonely Boy Forever’ masterfully deploys one of the EP’s greatest strengths: a catchy and super tight chorus.

The whole EP is only seventeen minutes long and not one of those minutes is wasted; at the end of ‘Alligator Jackie’ it stops just like that, with a single note and a rhyme on ‘incidental’. A lot of Halloweens’ early material came out of a song writing session in Paris, and there’s definitely something European about it all. If, for most people, the Vaccines remind them of Friday night gigs and a lot of people wearing great denim, then Halloweens are more like long summer days in Europe where you might idle around a museum and briefly become obsessed with a specific ancient statue. If that’s what you think you’re missing, then stream Maserati Anxiety Designed from today (August 21).