Everything Everything

Michael Spearman, Jonathan Higgs, Alex Robertshaw, Jeremy Pritchard

TALKING EVERYTHING

AND EVERYTHING

Manchester based Everything Everything talk their new album, touring with Muse, and why the Mercury Prize is still important…

Listen to this interview above where Everything Everything also talk about their favourite foreign films and B-movies.

You just supported Muse on their European tour; did you get to try on anything from Matt Bellamy’s wardrobe?

Jonathan “They wouldn’t fit us! It’s very bespoke stuff”

Alex “He’s a small guy, they are small people, Matt and Dom are very small”

Jeremy “Chris is normal sized, he’s a big man”

Are you going to incorporate any of their theatrics into your forthcoming tour?

Jonathan “Yeah revolving drums!”

Alex “We definitely learnt how far you can take it”

Jeremy “It was interesting to see that music on its own can only really fill a certain space before you start having to bring in extra production. We saw Radiohead in Manchester a couple of months ago and they had a really amazing lightshow as well. You need that, I think, to just push the music forward.”

What can we expect from your February tour then?

Alex “I think we’ll play pretty much the whole of the new album although there’s still a few songs that we haven’t properly road tested so that will be interesting.”

Jeremy “We wanted to save some of the songs until the album comes out because we think people will understand it better”

Alex “They’re songs you need to know in the context of the record I think. We like seeing which songs connect to the audiences. We were pleasantly surprised with the first record where people would sing all the lyrics to something like Engine Room which we never thought would connect like it did.”

How would you describe the difference in sound from the first?

Jeremy “Streamlined is one of the words we used, direct, matured, honed that sort of stuff. We started in such an extreme place so it’s difficult to explain because we haven’t become any less adventurous but I think we’ve become less uptight about staying in one place throughout one verse. It comes with confidence, first time round we were so obsessed with not covering any ground that we’d covered by ourselves or anyone else and we were trying to be original every 30 seconds, have something brand new 3 times every song. It’s not that we still don’t want to do that but it’s less rigorous, those rules don’t exist anymore.”

Jonathan “I don’t think it’s necessary anymore, I mean we could do that if we wanted but it’s more exciting to push ourselves to stay somewhere and make something of it. Craft an emotional ride, build it up and make people feel something.”

Are you more proud of this record?

Jonathan “I think so; I think we’ve worked harder at it. We could have made Man Alive part 2, it would have been the easy thing to do and it’s kind of our default setting but this record we rewrote things and rejected things and we just worked harder on crafting I think.”

Jeremy “We wanted to have an emotional connection. Not that the last one didn’t but this one has more. It’s a darker album and it’s easier to engage with emotionally. I think we were impressing people’s heads last time and now we’re trying to make an impact on their heart.”

Jonathan “The third album it’ll be balls.”

You were nominated for a Mercury Award in 2011, are you aiming for that again?

Alex “Everyone wants to be accepted, but it’s a case of if we get stuff like that it’s great but if we don’t we’ll have to work harder!”

Jonathan “We’re always going to be a band that’s got one, we’ve already done it.”

Jeremy “We don’t expect to do as well critically with this album. Man Alive was way better received than we thought it would be, it seemed to land at the right time”

Alex “You can never really tell, it all depends on what the world wants at that particular time.”

Jonathan “We’ve done what we think is right, and is the logical thing for us to do to keep ourselves stimulated. If we get to concerned with trying to make something people won’t hate it’d be awful.”

Which city has the best fans in the UK?

Jonathan “Scotland I’d say, Glasgow. They’re rowdy but in a really positive way.”

Have you ever got anything weird from a Scottish fan?

Alex “Someone threw a scotch egg at Jonathan.”

Jeremy “It wasn’t like a heckle, it was still in the wrapping! It was a present… we think”

What was the last gig you went to?

Jonathan “I went to see Delphic the other day.”

Jeremy “We played a XFM event so we saw all the bands there. We saw alt-j at the Royal College of Music which was good.”

Michael “Radiohead before that.”

Jeremy “We went to Dirty Projectors in Manchester that was great, The Invisibles were there as well.”

You’ve dropped the fox from the Man Alive cover, what’s the thinking behind the Arc artwork?

The “Man Alive” cover

Jeremy “The fox was just 1 image from 1 song on that album. One of the reasons we put ourselves on this cover was people found it difficult to connect an identity of a band with the music which we started to realise over the course of writing this album. We didn’t have the confidence to take ourselves seriously before, we’d never have done that on the first record and we’ll probably never do it again but I’m glad that we’re doing it now it feels like the right time, it humanises the music.”

Jonathan “It fits with the transition happening in the music.”

Alex “Depending on how it goes we may have to put the fox back on the third album!”

Jeremy “It’s just going to be black! The black album…”

Jonathan “The images are based on a collection of photographs of Captain Scott’s doomed south pole expedition in 1912 and there’s this particular one of Captain Oates that’s extremely modern looking. I was struck by how detailed it was, it looks like a 50 megapixel camera. It was printed onto glass amazingly it just has this ice cold air that’s so pristine it struck me. We tried to emulate the style whilst wearing jumpers!”

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