Everything Everything Live Review by Ryan Beardsley
The Mercury Music Prize is a funny old thing. On the one hand, some incredible records have been recognised over the last thirty years, names like Suede, Pulp, Arctic Monkeys et al have been honoured with the ‘album of the year’ by a panel of ‘experts’ tasked with a near impossible job of choosing the best music released in the UK in that given year.
But what does this have to do with tonight’s gig, I hear you ask? Well, I’ll tell you. Tonight I’m in Brixton to celebrate ten years of one of the finest British albums of the last decade, Everything Everything’s modus operandi; Get To Heaven.
A record so groundbreaking, so innovative that it should have pushed EE to superstardom at home and abroad, beginning with them taking home the Mercury Prize in 2015, which they were initially favourites for. Lo and behold, it was not even nominated, and the prize was eventually taken by one Benjamin Clementine. Me neither. I remember being seriously irked by the injustice at the time, and tonight has made me relive those emotions all over again, as this album was lightyears ahead of anything that came out that year.
The Academy is packed out and the Manchester lads stroll out to a hero’s welcome, clad in matching yellow jump suits save for a rather fetching poncho to designate front man Jonathan Higgs as band leader, they launch straight into To The Blade, incidentally one of the best track one side ones of the 21st century, and when the beat drops the crowd go appropriately mental.
The pace doesn’t settle as we shift straight into Blast Doors, and it’s clear Higgs means business; his trademark rapidfire delivery is at its peak as the fans do their best to keep up but cannot match his velocity.
Title track Get To Heaven encapsulates all the themes of the album, the paranoia, global tensions and existential dread, which I wish I could say has altered in the years since, but twas ever thus. To challenge and address such weighty issues while simultaneously crafting a perfect pop song is no mean feat.
Regret wins the audience participation award, with a lightshow so intense I think I may have left the gig with an added helping of epilepsy. The euphoria of the music and the foreboding of the lyrics, the constant bombardment of information from the then relatively tame 24-hour news cycle, reflected in song, still injects me with a tinge of anxiety.
But tonight is a celebration as it should be, Spring/Sun/Winter/Dread has nearly five thousand people on their feet before Distant Past takes us almost literally back to where so many of us want to be, reclaiming our youth for three precious minutes.
It occurred to me at this point that exactly 10 years ago, I was in this very venue watching the band tour this record the first time around in something of a meta moment. They’re a better band now than they were then; the energy and fierceness may have calmed in the albums since in order for them to showcase the full breadth of their imagination, but tonight it’s all fire and passion and all the better for it.
There’s a lengthy encore dominated by fan favourite No Reptiles, which sends South London into a frenzy as once again, the most hardcore fans try to chant along with Higgs and catch the breakneck pace that is beyond most mere mortals. This record has stood the test of time, and in ten years, all being well, the songs will still be sending shivers down our collective spines, but with any luck, the themes will be a little less prescient.
The Mercury Prize is rubbish anyway.
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