By Matt Craig Burke
Everything Everything covers a lot ground; from retro-rock, to modern-house and all in between. For their third LP, the Manchester gentlemen deliver a playful batch of songs that are desirable and stimulating.
As Get to Heaven begins with “To the Blade” it makes you think: “great, an Alt-J rip-off”, but it punches into originality with an uppity groove of soaring vocals and frantic guitars, bending you backwards. While their first track grabs your attention; “Distant Past” has you addicted. Motivating and groovy with it’s dance appeal and sampled mutter vocals that would compliment a gym’s playlist nicely. “Regrets” has the band sounding like, well… a band. It’s verses reminisces something like The Specials, while “Spring/Sun/Winter/Dread” is flashy and vibrant feel has them resembling a DJ remixing TV on the Radio. Vividly, Get To Heaven has you distracted by it’s colored warmth on the first few listens, but as you fall deeper into the 11 song LP, (17 songs for the deluxe version) you start to notice certain tracks bid something more to look forward to. Simple verses turn into a dominating chorus, slow build-ups leading towards euphoric releases, while calm and collective morph into extroverted and playful; all of which keep the album on repeat.
Everything Everything create a sound that is far from boring. Get to Heaven can be so amusing, animated, and colorful at times (the album art fits the music superbly). Yet, the deluxe version does drag a bit. As the six songs are definitely worth the listen, they would be better off as an EP. Stand-outs are: “President Heartbeat” and “Only Good As My God” as the band resurrects from the mid-80’s with a heavy, new-wave-punk tone.
With all the genre skipping, club dwellers as well as the festival hipster junkies will be more than satisfied with Everything Everything. They bed beg the question: “Why aren’t these guys huge yet?”
Rating: 8.0/10
