WATCH
“BIG CLIMB”
LISTEN
‘RE-ANIMATOR’ (ALBUM)
Today, Everything Everything release their eagerly anticipated new album ‘RE-ANIMATOR’. The album has emerged to widespread critical acclaim, with many hailing the band’s visionary cocktail of intricate experimentation and immediately accessible art-pop.
The band have launched the album alongside a video for the new single “Big Climb”. Arguably the most striking track on the new album, it’s a groove-laden hybrid of off-kilter disco and taut funk, with Jonathan Higgs’ semi-rapped vocals presenting a nihilistic call-to-arms for the youth of today to continue to campaign against environmental destruction.
The accompanying video presents Everything Everything as you’ve never seen them before: slick-suited city boys. It’s partly a satirical swipe at the current push to get workers back in the office, but plays around the song’s central hook, “We’re not afraid that it will kill us, we are afraid that it won’t”, a reference to online teenage nihilism regarding climate disaster. Footage of the yuppie-fied band is interspersed with images showing the horror of a planet already plagued by climate change.
Speaking about the new video, Everything Everything reveal, “We started to notice a lot of online dejection at the state of the world that young people stand to inherit. It was nihilistic, but perfectly understandable and basically rational. They are inheriting a rapidly warming planet with few jobs and little affordable housing, created by previous generations who seem utterly unapologetic. The attitude is ‘We fucked it, now it’s your problem so you fix it.’ It’s shameful that we’re relying on fifteen year olds to lead the way. We wanted to satirise all of that.”
The new video is the latest to be directed by the band themselves, having also made the videos for “In Birdsong”, “Arch Enemy”, “Planets” and most recently, “Violent Sun”. Watch the video for “Big Climb” HERE.
The band’s approach to ‘RE-ANIMATOR’ was to streamline the creative process by focusing on harmonies and melodies over synths and programming. Inspiration came thick and fast: wonderment at the wider world despite the horror of its politics; existentialism and the prolonged, if fading, youthfulness of being in a touring band; and the ominous threat of climate change. All things which contribute to a sense of one door closing while another awaits.
Extensive reading shaped such ideas further, especially in regard to front-man Jonathan Higgs’ fascination with the eminent psychologist Julian Jaynes’ theory of the bicameral mind. It argues that early in human evolution, the two sides of the brain were next to each other but functioned independently. In essence, one side would hear the other sending instructions via a disembodied voice - a zombie-like state of pre-consciousness.
“This idea of the divided self-captivated me,” said Higgs. “Jaynes attributes this to the origin of gods, people ascribing deity status to this voice they could hear in their head. All this blew my mind, and I started thinking of ways I could make this a central concept. It really touched me. So across the whole record there are millions or references to this theory – to having a split brain, two selves, hearing voices.”
Fittingly, the album also emerged in two stages. A year of writing and demoing was followed by two weeks recording at RAK last December with producer John Congleton (St. Vincent, Sharon Van Etten, David Byrne). He complemented the band’s back-to-basics nature by encouraging them to record quickly and decisively. It’s a looser, less cluttered sound that heightens their focus on the fundamentals of song writing.
As it turns out, there is no better time than the present to hear this collection of songs. Speaking about “In Birdsong,” the first track released, Higgs explains, “We weren’t intending to share this song right now, but in the age of coronavirus, we wanted to be responsive to the changed landscape. And In Birdsong unexpectedly emerged as the most appropriate song to reappear with.”
Higgs' deft-touch theorising is also woven into “Arch Enemy” –an irresistible, sunny melody and sinuous art-funk rhythm but lyrics that, lyrically and figuratively, plumb the depths. “On the face of it, it’s about a guy who’s hearing a voice in day-to-day life, which he describes as a god,” begins Higgs. “But it’s actually a fatberg in the sewers, and he’s praying to it: ‘Come, like Noah’s flood, and flood these lands with fat.’ The fatberg is a metaphor for waste and greed and climate change.”
“Big Climb,” the current single off the album has a similar one-two – or, even, twin-action – punch: lyrics to stop you in your tracks, music to drag you to the dancefloor. “I wanted to make a big Tears For Fears, Peter Gabriel type thing,” explains Alex Robertshaw from the band, “so I purchased this new synth just for this song.” “Not afraid that it’ll kill us, yeah, we are afraid that it won’t,” sing the massed ranks of harmonies in the chorus. This, expands Higgs, is the climate emergency from another angle, albeit with lyrics actually based on what someone close to him said about a suicide attempt. “I didn’t want to write about suicide, so this is a chant, an anthem for the youth: fuck this world, you guys fucked it up, I hope it kills us all.”
Lean, propulsive, anthemic, “The Actor” is another stand-out, and speaks to Higgs and Robertshaw’s ground-zero writing rules. Bracketing the album are rousing opener “Lost Powers” and the closing, climactic “Violent Sun”. The former works at the top of the album not so much because of the lyrical theme, “the conspiracy man, the underground man,” which is something Higgs often goes back to “because a lot of my friends have become that guy over the last 10 years”. It’s because, simply, “Lost Powers” is a glorious pop moment, a song in which Higgs’ cloudbusting falsetto has never sounded better. “It sets the scene nicely, without being bombastic. It lets you know that this is essentially going to be a positive album, taking the good side of the re-animator idea.”
Then, at the other end, “Violent Sun” works as a full-stop because it is, frankly, a banger. “It’s the biggest song we’ve ever written,” says Higgs of a New Order-meet-Bruce Springsteen epic. “Probably my only stipulation for the album was that we had a song that sounded like the last song of the night in a club. The lights have gone on, the DJ has said they’ll do one more, and you’re shitting yourself – is this gonna be the song that’s gonna help you kiss the boy, kiss the girl, beat up the bully? Some teenage bollocks like that. So this song set out to capture that feeling of time running out, but also total euphoria. And the song’s almost a bit too loud, like something gone wrong with the mastering. And the lyrics are trying to capture that anxiety, and this fear that’s something to get us, to consume us, but I want to be there with you when it happens.”
In closing, Robertshaw explains, “This time it was about focusing on the fundamentals of song writing first and foremost. In the past when Jon and I have sat down together to write, we've been driven by a style of music or particular rhythmic feel. This time around we really just started with chords and melody and built it up from the bare bones in that way. A lot of thought went into every part of every song and how they interlink and shift between keys. Making the music feel effortless when a lot is going on was a huge thing for me personally. There are songs on this record that have achieved that in a way far beyond what we’ve done before.”
Everything Everything celebrated the release of the album by playing two innovative virtual reality concert events. The ‘Everything Everything: Virtual RE-ANIMATOR’ shows heralded a new standard in the world of interactive music events. The band’s set was complemented by a range of visual elements, drawing on the video content and aesthetic of the ‘RE-ANIMATOR’ campaign, as well as aspects that were inspired by their first four albums. Fans also embraced its interactive real-time experiences, which allowed them to meet the band and other fans, wear virtual merch and even fly around the virtual amphitheatre environment.
‘RE-ANIMATOR’ follows 2017’s ‘A Fever Dream’, which debuted at #5 on the Official UK Albums Chart. It was nominated for the Mercury Prize as well as two Ivor Novello Awards, and the band celebrated by playing their biggest headline show to date at London’s Alexandra Palace.
‘RE-ANIMATOR’ is out everywhere now. Album bundles are available and include signed albums and prints, plus exclusive merch designs. Visit the band’s official website for more information: everything-everything.co.uk
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