3.5/5
Mancunian quartet strive for profound greatness from zesty A.I project RAW DATA FEEL with their sixth successive, Mountainhead.
<< The taller the mountain, the deeper the hole. >>
OVERVIEW
No one else quite operates in the same visionary realm of Everything Everything. Unique, refreshing in a seemingly dystopian backdrop, the band have received critical acclaim in simply going against the grain. Their debut in 2010 has skittish Qwerty Finger, while the follow-up had enigmatic oddball Cough Cough. Their most astute in terms of numbers, Get To Heaven had their most commercially accessible faves but still managed to slip in No Reptiles. Their most recent Raw Data Feel was their ambitious – which resulted in using an AI program to splurge out the records’ lyrics and titles. Off-kilter alt-pop quartet Everything Everything are masters of exploring the grandest of grand ideas. If you’re going to run such grand ideas, it’s sonic depths and melodic hooks need to be good enough so they can run with the alt-apocalyptic world they’ve found themselves in.
But there’s something about Mountainhead that doesn’t sit quite right. The premise itself for the record is a promising one, albeit overdone. It imagines an alternate society in which those at the lowest rung of society’s ladder are forced to work relentlessly to keep its elite, at the mountain’s peak, elevated. It trumps in terms of offering quirky metaphors to our current existence, all the while keeping up with their airy accessibility, as if we’re floating above it all. However, where Raw Data Feel presents a more complete project with a lot of after-thought – this album sounds almost as if they’ve scoured their memory sticks for half-complete B sides to stick on a record.
SONG-TO-SONG
The wavy synth lines of Wild Guess is a promising start, reflecting the edgy explosive experimentations we saw in the bands’ yesteryear on Arc. There’s more levels with The End of the Contender, an alt-indie snapshot with both tension and bounce. Cold Reactor stands in itself as a testament to the striving of an advance future, at the cost of ourselves and our wellbeing. Through astute lyrics, whimsical instrumentals and buzzing synths – it tries all its might to hold up this album: “I love an atom bomb, but I’ve become a cold reactor.“
Buddy, Come Over is a hallmark ’80s sleuth noir soundtrack leading up to a synth overload with a remarkable guitar hook but offers very little else in design. The Mad Stone is a art-pop masterclass with tube drums, orchestral accompaniment – met with poignant strings – and Jonathan’s blitzing vocal trademark as it sets the records’ narrative with a municipal choral sound. TV Dog and Canary sound charming and whimsical in nature – all the while with a damning cover-up to the story as a whole. But they just sound all so safe. Too safe for an Everything Everything record that explores the deepest cuts and quirkiest sounds from usually systemic instruments. Enter the Mirror is a funky shade of colour that certainly won’t be lost on folk – and a potential setlist contender for their string of festival dates they have lined up for this Summer.
City Song is a beautiful portrait of the bands’ heartfelt visionary of their own version of art-pop, and The Witness cooks up a Tetris alternative, met with more choral upshots and daydream landscapes of wishing for the world to stop and think every once in a while.
Whether Mountainhead requires multiple listens to achieve its desired effect or not – while certain songs show promise of EE’s trademark sound – a lot of songs are lost and march out layers that can be seen as far too safe, especially for a band who don’t play that card at all.
manvmusic.com 
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