Music / Everything Everything

These are the rules of the game.^note L-R: Jonathan Higgs, Alex Robertshaw, Jeremy Pritchard, Michael Spearman

Influences: Radiohead, Nirvana, David Bowie, Slint, Mogwai, Michael Jackson, Destiny's Child, 10cc, XTC, Devo, Mr. Bungle, R. Kelly, Timbaland, Steve Reich, Aphex Twin, Talking Heads, Kraftwerk, Tally Hall, Wild Beasts, Max Tundra

Everything Everything are a very eclectic art rock band from Manchester, England.

Current Members

• Jonathan Higgs – lead vocals, keyboards, rhythm guitar
• Jeremy Pritchard – bass guitar, keyboards, backing vocals
• Michael Spearman – drums, backing vocals
• Alex Robertshaw (2009-present) – lead guitar, keyboards, backing vocals

Former Members

• Alex Niven (2007-2009) – lead guitar, backing vocals

Discography

• 2010 - Man Alive
• 2013 - Arc
• 2015 - Get to Heaven
• 2017 - A Fever Dream
• 2020 - RE-ANIMATOR
• 2022 - Raw Data Feel
• 2024 - Mountainhead

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And that eureka moment hits you like a trope list:

• Album Title Drop: Man Alive^note in "Qwerty Finger", Get to Heaven^note in "Get to Heaven", A Fever Dream^note in "A Fever Dream", RE-ANIMATOR^note in "Black Hyena", and Mountainhead^note in "The Mad Stone" all have this.
• Animal Motifs:
  • The fox has been one for the band since the Man Alive days, chosen as a symbol for their ability to adapt to urban and more modern environments. The song "Tin (The Manhole)" represent the dying thoughts of a fox that has just been run over.
  • Raw Data Feel has a recurring Sea Monster motif, with mythical ocean monsters like a tentacled leviathan and hydra as well as real-life sharks and lampreys.
• Artificial Stupidity: "Walk into the wall like you're an NPC".^note in "Breadwinner".
• Anti-Police Song: "Only As Good As My God" is from point of view of a brutal riot-officer, including the use of water cannons against the crowd.
• Appeal to Familial Wisdom: Hilariously zig-zagged in "I Want A Love Like This". The narrator disregards their mother's advice and then acknowledges that it's a bad idea.
  Why don't you listen to your mama?
  She's old!
  They call it madness under pressure
  I call it home
  'Cos someone always dies
  Someone always dies when we do this
• Bald Of Awesome: Jon sported a skinhead cut during the RE-ANIMATOR and Raw Data Feel eras.
• BBC Quarry: The music videos for "Spring / Sun / Winter / Dread" and "Cold Reactor" used old quarries to replicate molten and mountainous worlds, respectively.
• Blob Monster: "Arch Enemy" is about a malevolent god in the form of a sentient fatberg.
• Break Up Song: "Suffragette Suffragette", "The House is Dust", and "Mercury and Me" are all straight-up examples.
• BSoD Song: "Fortune 500" leads up to this, the protagonist repeating the words "I've won, I've won, they've told me that I’ve won" again and again as he comes to terms with the fact that he's broken into Buckingham Palace and murdered the Queen.
• Call-and-Response Song: A frequent element of their songs. "Photoshop Handsome", "Supernormal" and "Luddites And Lambs" most noticeably. "Cough Cough", "Desire", "Distant Past", and "Bad Friday" feature call-and-response parts too.
  Just cram it into every pore
  (A skin that blisters in the sun)
  The dislocation of the jaw
  (A stomach lining in the bin)
  A wall of muscle under glass
  (You slide all over everything)
  Slapping the lever like a rat
  (You made that problem for yourself)
• Came Back Wrong: A recurring theme on RE-ANIMATOR, most notably in "Black Hyena".
• Clarke's Third Law: The technologically advanced robot love interest in "My Computer" is described as "magical".
• Concept Album: In the sense of having central themes, not full linear stories.
  • The doomed Terra Nova Expedition to the South Pole and specifically the self-sacrifice of Lawrence Oates played a big part in the early conception of Arc, which focuses on depression, disillusion with the state of the world, and feeling like a burden. It deconstructs British stoicism and challenges the idea of suffering in silence as a virtue.
  • Get To Heaven features violence throughout human history, radicalization, terrorism, authoritarianism, cults, and conspiracies.
  • In their fourth album, the events of 2016 feel like A Fever Dream.
  • RE-ANIMATOR is based on the hypothesis that human beings once had a bicameral mind and that the merging of the two sides was the dawn of consciousness. References to a divided mind, monsters, magic, and madness both divine and mundane abound. True to its title, the album also repeatedly references the concept of rebirth.
  • Raw Data Feel is about trauma and technology. While the album does feature canonical characters, the story is deliberately left open to interpretation.
  • Mountainhead takes place in a Alternate Universe in which all of civilisation inhabit and are involved in the construction of a great mountain, with the elite living on top whilst the bottom of society's ladder are forced to serve them in a pit underground.
• Conditioned to Accept Horror: The protagonist of "Get to Heaven" who's caught up in trying to remember his password and parking location and even trying to plan a romantic evening while he strolls past scenes of death and destruction.
• Continuity Nod:
  • "Master" Record Producer Dave Sardine later shows up in the music videos for Get to Heaven​'s "Spring/Sun/Winter/Dread," RE-ANIMATOR​'s "Big Climb" and "In Birdsong", Raw Data Feel​'s "Jennifer", and Mountainhead's "Cold Reactor".
  • The concept of the dragon twin from Get to Heaven​'s "Fortune 500" is referenced in "It Was a Monstering" off RE-ANIMATOR.
  • Raymond, a character originally introduced in "MY KZ, UR BF," later appears in "Jennifer". The "whispering wall" from "Violent Sun" also appears in the same song.
  • "The Mad Stone" makes several fleeting references to the songs "Wizard Talk", "Choice Mountain", "The Peaks", and "No Reptiles".
• Coordinated Clothes: Commonly seen sporting these in press photos and always in more-or-less matching uniforms onstage.
• Cut Himself Shaving: The narrator of "Bad Friday" is using the standard What Did I Do Last Night? scenario as an explanation for injuries inflicted by their abusive partner.
• Day of the Jackboot: Or rather a "Night of the Long Knives"
• Evil Laugh: In "Regret".
• Flowery Insults: "Spring/Sun/Winter/Dread" has a pretty good one:
  You are a thief and a murderer too
  Stole the face that you wear from a craven baboon
• Future Loser: "The End of the Contender" is from the point of view of a former boxer who refuses to admit he's washed up and a has-been, and blames his misfortunes on the changing social climate.
• Genre Roulette: In the band's own words, they are "inspired by everything except 12 bar blues". Man Alive in particular manages to cycle through a wide variety of styles including Math Rock, Progressive Rock, Synth-Pop, Hip-Hop, Funk, Baroque Pop, and IDM whilst maintaining a consistent mood and sound.
• The Great Flood: The concept of a biblical flood made not of water but of fat drowning out humanity for their greed and wastefulness is a recurring theme in several songs including "Arch Enemy", "No Reptiles", "Lord of the Trapdoor" and "Final Form". The more conventional sort of flood is mentioned in "Only As Good As My God".
• Grief Song: "Final Form" is dedicated to a friend of Jon's who was paralysed and had passed away prior to its recording.
• Ground by Gears: The exhortation to "Throw your body onto the cogs!" in "Luddites and Lambs".
  (Oh, you rust the gears with your blood!)
• Hanlon's Razor: Invoked in "No Reptiles". For the most part, life sucks because people are just stupid and cowardly as opposed to there being grand evil conspiracies.
  And no reptiles!
  Just soft-boiled eggs in shirts and ties
  Waiting for the flashing green man
  Quivering and wobbling just like all the eggs you know!
• Heinous Hyena: The titular "Black Hyena".
• Human Resources: "NASA Is On Your Side" takes place in a post-apocalyptic world where the remains of teenagers are turned into fossil fuels.
• In the Dreaming Stage of Grief: The premise of A Fever Dream, a response to Brexit, the election of Donald Trump, and the resurgence of fascism in general.
• Inside a Computer System: "Photoshop Handsome" is sung from the point-of-view of a video game avatar that has become self-aware.
• Limited Lyrics Song: "New Deep" just asks the same question three times.
• List Song: "It Was a Monstering" has a bridge consisting of various (real and imagined) monsters, occasionally interrupted by observations about them.
• Lyrical Dissonance: The band are known for mixing bright, uptempo music with dark and often scary lyrics, which means a lot of their songs fall into this category, including:
  • "Get To Heaven", about a character who is carefree and optimistic as he goes about his daily life completely desensitized to the war-torn hellscape he inhabits.
  • "Spring/Sun/Winter/Dread" is a cheery little tune about death, aging, and becoming just as bad as your ancestors.
  • "Bad Friday" sounds like a typical club banger but the lyrics quickly take an unsettling turn. Eventually it becomes clear that the song is about intimate partner violence.
• Machine Monotone: "Baby, can you leave it in the (DIS-TANT PAST)?"
• Malaproper:
  • The narrator of "Breadwinner" demands that you read him his "marimba rights".
  • "Time is fun when you're just having flies" in "Pizza Boy".
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: The protagonist of "Arch Enemy" follows the voice of a God that he hears in his head but it leads him to a sentient fatberg in a sewer, which he begins to worship. Higgs says that "it's sort of a question mark" as to whether the fatberg is real or he's just crazy.
• Measuring the Marigolds: The overall point of "Radiant", that measuring things doesn't do much good and isn't what's important.
• Mockumentary: A particularly surreal example occurs in In The Studio with Dave Sardine, a video made during the band's Man Alive sessions. The band uses the framework of a "master" record producer discussing & showing off his recent "work" to spoof and exaggerate their own music.
• Motor Mouth: Jon's lyrics are known for being quite verbose, especially in the band's early work. "No Reptiles" and "Wizard Talk" are delivered at breakneck speed.
• Musical Squares: The cover of Arc features the four band members each in a different square.
• Off with His Head!: Happens to Raymond in the song "Jennifer" for abusing the titular character.
• One-Woman Song: Just one, the aforementioned "Jennifer".
• The Oner: The video to "The End of the Contender" is shot in one long continuous take.
• Performance Video: "Desire" and "Pizza Boy" both play this trope relatively straight (the latter is actually constructed from footage of their live shows).
• Recursive Reality: Explored in the song "The Mad Stone":
  At the very top there was a screen that showed a picture of a man who stood there looking at a picture of a man who stood there looking at a picture of a picture of a man on a screen
  And he was looking at another picture of a man who stood there looking at a picture of a man who stood there looking at a picture of a picture of a man who was the double of me
• Repetitive Name: Alongside the band itself, Man Alive​'s "Suffragette Suffragette" and Arc​'s "Cough Cough" also double-up their wordcount.
• Robosexual: "My Computer" is about being infatuated with a robot that is beautiful, intelligent, strong, and also terrifying.
• Sense Loss Sadness: "Feet For Hands" tells the story of Police Constable David Rathband, who was shot and blinded and later took his own life.
• Sex for Solace: "Armourland" is about being with your partner as the world falls apart.
  I wanna take you home
  Take off your blindfold and show you what I am
  I wanna take you home
  And find some new joy in this autopilot life
  I wanna take you home
  Slow down your heartbeat and dry those glazing eyes
  I wanna take you home
  Blackout our windows and hold you 'til we die
• Shout-Out:
  • The band's name is partly taken from the first two lines of "Everything in Its Right Place".
  • The only named characters in Man Alive's MY KZ, UR BF are Monica and Raymond.
  • Higgs has admitted that musical motifs used in both "NASA Is On Your Side" and "Radiant" come from the theme song to The Itchy & Scratchy Show. "My Computer" also references the infamous discussion about the Show Within a Show's Xylophones for Walking Bones moment.
    • He also admitted the chorus to "Get to Heaven" was deliberately meant to mirror the chorus of "Once in a Lifetime".
  • "Come back as something organic" in "Photoshop Handsome" is taken from a line in the Bottom episode "Hole".
  • Slender Man and Hollow Man are part of the list in "It Was a Monstering". Said monstering is also said to be happening at "nearly 90,000 feet".
  • RE-ANIMATOR's name is, well, RE-ANIMATOR.
  • "Metroland is Burning" refers to an actual theme park called Metroland that Jon used to frequent in his youth.
  • The protagonist of "The End of the Contender" is modelled after Ronnie Pickering, an amateur bare-knuckle boxer who went viral after threatening to start a fight with a moped driver.
• Singer Namedrop: "Luddites and Lambs" and "Regret" both incorporate the band's name into their lyrics.
• Sins of Our Fathers: "Leave the Engine Room" is about being doomed to repeat the mistakes of their forefathers.
• Skull Cups: Essentially summarised in "Cut UP!".
  Drinking from a hollow skull
  Yes, this is an awkward time
• Split-Personality Merge: "In Birdsong" describes the merging of the bicameral mind as the origin of human consciousness.
• Subverted Sitcom: "MY KZ, UR BF" juxtaposes a standard Home-Early Surprise with a bomb falling on the house it occurs in.
• Surreal Music Video: All of their videos fall into this category (often bordering on Surreal Horror), but both versions of "Photoshop Handsome", "Arch Enemy", "Supernormal" and "Teletype" are arguably the most extreme examples.
• Take That!: "Big Game" ridicules Donald Trump, whilst "Run the Numbers" is one towards Conservative MP Michael Gove's misguided quotes about Brexit and how people are tired of listening to experts.
• Terrorists Without a Cause: Or, Terrorists with an unknown cause. The protagonist of "Fortune 500" is willing to break into Buckingham Palace and kill the Queen for no other reason that he's been told to - by someone who might not even exist and may just be a voice in his head.
• Surprisingly Gentle Song
  • "Put Me Together" from A Fever Dream. It’s a gentle and soft jazz song which the track is a far cry from their usual frantic indie rock.
  • "In Birdsong" from RE-ANIMATOR. It’s an entirely ambient song about the healing power of nature.
  • Jennifer from RAW DATA FEEL. It’s a gentle acoustic rock song which uses completely no electronics in this song.
• Textless Album Cover: Get to Heaven. Zig-zagged on Arc - CD copies shift the yellow band containing the band and album names into the spine, while vinyl and digital releases integrate it into the cover.
• Title Drop: Possibly accidental example in "Regret":
  Did you think that everything, everything would change?
• This Is a Song: "Can't Do," when it goes into specifics, discusses Higgs struggling to write lyrics for the song.
• [Trope Name]: The name of Man Alive's "Two for Nero" literally describes how it was meant to be the second of four tracks burnt to a CD using the Nero Burning ROM software.
• White Shirt of Death: The gory conclusion of the music video for "No Reptiles".

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