Everything Everything opened a new chapter in their career with the release of their recent single ‘In Birdsong.’ The band announce that their eagerly anticipated new album ‘Re-Animator’ will be released on August 21. It has been launched with the new single ‘Arch Enemy’, which was premiered as Annie Mac’s Hottest Record in the World. ‘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
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 regards 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.
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 songwriting.
The new single ‘Arch Enemy’ channels that energy. It’s a song of contrasts: an irresistible, sunny melody and sinuous art-funk rhythm with lyrics that plumb the depths.
‘Re-Animator’ sets its positive tone right from the start with the glorious pop energy of opener ‘Lost Powers’. ‘Big Climb’ is then constructed for the dancefloor, albeit with far darker lyrics that offer a climate emergency-themed anthem for the youth. It all comes to a head with the climatic New Order-meets-Springsteen epic ‘Violent Sun’, an anxious and euphoric celebration of defiant unity in the midst of end times. In short, ‘Re-Animator’ is that Everything Everything excel at. It’s beautiful, provocative, literate and mood-enhancing.
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