Album Review: Everything Everything’s ‘Get To Heaven’ is straight-up blasphemy

Album Review: “Get To Heaven” by Everything Everything

Where oh where did my prog rock go? Oh, where oh where could she be? It’s in Manchester, dummy, where all cool things come from.

Everything Everything is impossible to categorize. Sure, it’s pop, but there are heavy influences ranging from Afro-pop, glitch, calypso, reggae, stadium rock, and hip hop. There is a predominance of afro-Cuban dance rhythms, particularly the tresillo, which is the first half of a rumba clave pattern, or a simplified version of the habanera rhythm (for all you ethnomusicologists out there). They’ve admitted to being influenced by a wide spectrum of styles, listing just about everything in the history of popular music with the emphatic exception of 12-bar blues (thank heavens!).

Frontman Jonathan Higgs spits out words almost as rapidly as the Micro Machines Man. His voice—dark, throaty, and manifestly British—sounds like what one imagine Alan Rickman’s sister might … if he has one, and if she sings. He flips back and forth between chest voice and falsetto comfortably—and frequently—much like Peter Gabriel, if less gracefully. He also clearly burns a lot of calories in the process; there is no half-hearted humming on his part.

Everything Everything’s “Get To Heaven” is an album of brilliant, unforgettable one-liners. Given the rapidity of Higgs’ delivery, this makes for a thick stack of lyrics that reads like a collaboration between Lord Byron, George Carlin, and Frank Zappa.

“To The Blade” opens sweetly sung, almost cried, by Higgs, who is soon interrupted by the musical equivalent of an axe crashing through the front door: halftime drums carry heavy punctuation from guitars for a couple of phrases, followed by panicked, frenetic drumming and picking. However, “To The Blade” is really just a mere prelude to the album.

Things get serious in “Distant Past.” The song’s intro is deceptively smooth, but once Higgs begins coughing up lyrics like a consumptive expectorating a lungful of blood—with magnificently bizarre lines like “Saw off all my stinking limbs / Blood dripping down my sunken money chin” and “Tall blade dripping in every field / I’m blooming like a fuming human shield”—it’s not long until the chorus hits. And boy, does it hit. It’s is a disco catastrophe. It’s Shiva, destroyer of dancehalls. If you can stop jumping up and down for one second, wipe that ridiculous grin off your face and listen closely, you can hear a communication ping from the old Star Trek series amid Higgs crazily flinging his voice around like a bullwhip.

The title track, despite occasional sample glitches, is again misleadingly mellow in the verse, which grooves comfortably. In the background, you can hear a rhythmic melody played on unresonated, unamplified marimba bars. But the chorus sounds just like Talking Heads. It’s all there: the drums, the high and jangly chorus of guitars, and the absurd, dystopian lyrics—“As the tanks roll by / Under a blood black sky / I’m thinking: ‘Where in the blazes did I park my car?'”

No momentum is lost with “Regret,” which kicks off Motown-style with shouted choruses of “Regret! Regret!” atop a stompy two-and-four drum beat and a piano played like a cowbell. There’s more David Byrne-influenced guitar work in the chorus (a distinctive and consistent hallmark of Alex Robertshaw’s style), the distinctive laugh of Satan or some other abusive deity in the background, and a guitar solo that proves—yet again—that all you really need is a delay pedal. Of course, the regret discussed comes from a life wasted on delusional cult fervor: “Did you think that everything, everything would change? / Did you imagine it in a different way?”

“Spring / Sun / Winter / Dread” isn’t the theme song for St. George. It could be, though, if it weren’t for that medieval dancing law. ‘Cause once it drops, asses shall shake, city ordinances be damned. Seriously, these guys should teach a course at Harvard entitled “How To Get Down Wit’ It.” Once they’ve established what is just about the most slaphappy groove ever conceived, they pull the drums and bass out and lay down this gorgeous little stanza:

You are a thief and a murderer too
Stole the face that you wear from a craven baboon
Cause you did it to her, and you did it to him
And you did it before and you’ll do it again

Higgs drops this line—and continues to chant it like a deliriously wasted Trappist—while you’ve already gotten mixed up in the infectiousness of the chorus, so it’s not until you’ve already gotten naked and are running around your house chasing the pets with silly string that you hear this awful accusation. What the hell is this song about?

“The Wheel (Is Turning Now)” is a beautiful mix of Darwinism and hip hop. A synth buzzes like a twerking fly at the outset of the verse between an occasionally sledgehammered piano in the bass, but the chorus is closer to something between The Police and U2. Two verses, two choruses, and a whole lot of religious deconstruction later, everything drops out but that tresillo rhythm in the bass, over which Higgs croons, “Do you wanna know how far you’ve gone? / Do you have any idea?”

Arguably the darkest, most sardonic song (although given the competition on this album, that claim would be tough to defend), “Fortune 500” is an anxious and schizophrenic homage to imperialism: “The trail of destruction, but at least it’s a trail / I am compelled to take you by the throat.” The song ends after the repeated chanting of “I won, I won, they told me that I’ve won,” accompanied by insistent drumming and a huge stack of horns.

“Blast Doors” starts fast and light, with Higgs sounding like a slow, growling Matisyahu while rapid-fire staccato guitar picks deftly over more tresillo-based beats, but then the chorus drops into halftime, sounding straight-up like Coldplay. The lyrics are a dizzying tower of purple prose, the narrative of which is far too surreal to decipher any less vaguely than “I hate the status quo.” Higgs wields his falsetto so liberally and with such abandon that if the music weren’t so intense, and if he didn’t sing with such supercharged conviction, it would sound silly. Rather, with cryptic witticisms, like “Shoot a starving porno for the yuppies in a circle / Second death upon you swimming backwards like a turtle,” one is simply far too dumbstruck by this insane verbal assault to even begin to try to engage it from a left-brained point of view.

Entering to the world of creepy, post-Nintendo pop, “Zero Pharaoh” is both sultry rave music as well as a casual critique of absolute power. With a polyrhythmic repetition of “Give me the gun” which sounds like a Thom Yorke lyric, they stack textures of vocals and guitar counterpoint until they build to such a point that it simply boils over.

“No Reptiles” begins sweetly, with Higgs quietly spitting some indecipherable something at light speed—20 bucks to the fella with the first successful transcription! Good luck. Those lost lyrics might be the Rosetta Stone to picking through the palpable anger in lines like “I’m going to kill a stranger / So don’t you be a stranger.” As with “Spring / Sun / Winter / Dread,” this song shines in its queer juxtaposition of incredibly biting lyrics over music that Beethoven would have composed for his mother. About halfway through, this lyric builds and builds, with harmonies layered to hymnal proportion with each repetition: “Oh baby it’s alright, it’s alright to feel / Like a fat child in a pushchair old enough to run / Old enough to fire a gun.” From Oscar Wilde to Mark Twain, can anyone hold a candle to that level of scathing social commentary?

“Warm Healer” feels like glitchy Radiohead, like a sped-up, shuffled, and broken version of “Myxomatosis.” Again, despite the overall starkly Picassoesque soundscape, Higgs somehow achieves to attain some level of plaintive poignancy in the chorus, singing “Babe, I saw what you did tonight / It’s ugly but it is all I want.”

While the pacing works, to imagine that the album could end here is disappointing. The deluxe edition (there’s no point in not buying it) includes six more songs, beginning with “We Sleep In Pairs,” which sounds like some desperate national anthem with lyrics by Kurt Vonnegut.

It’s hard to think that they would bother releasing any version of this album without “Hapsburg Lippp” which is a PTSD-triggering dub masterpiece. Covering everything from political violence to royal inbreeding, it drops gems like “Come to the river now / make yourself a bodybag” and “Ah, kiss me baby with your Hapsburg Lip / Make me nervous” during thunderous drumming and terrifying synth bass lines.

“President Heartbeat” is similarly superb, conjuring a general ‘80s aesthetic that lies somewhere between INXS and early Duran Duran. “Brainchild” is sort of a love song but still ventures into anti-state and anti-religious area: “Make your living selling promises that you forget / Put your head between the horror and a parapet.”

“Yuppie Supper” features both more spastic post-Radiohead drumming as well as well-articulated guitar picking, all for the best as this track is largely instrumental. Honestly, the musicianship throughout the album is virtuosic and precise enough that it’s no wonder Higgs’ vocals are so bombastic; they simply have to be in order to keep one’s attention.

And now for one final public flogging of the clergy and public officials. In “Only As Good As My God,” Higgs describes destroying a pharmacy and a bank with a firehose, then his military horses trample people to death. Next, he removes the heads of power, cutting “off the head of that snake”: “It’s as simple as a— (ooh) tick, (ooh) tock / Defenestrate them all night, let me grab a latte.” Finally, on the steps of his church, he chases down a “red girl,” whom he also tramples to death, punctuating it with “I bet you didn’t think of this when you woke up this morning.” This whole tirade is justified with a damning proclamation that no one, from Jonathan Swift to Bill Maher, can touch:

If they crawl out of the mud
Wash them away in a flood
I’m only as a good as my God
Burnt hair and more money

Everything Everything’s “Get To Heaven” hits bull’s-eyes all around. Musicianship? Check. Thoughtful, crafted and structured songs? Check. Relevant lyrics? Check. Danceability? Check. Not only is it good, it’s the pupil-expanding, jaw-dropping kind of good that warrants putting it on loop all day. Buy it now (but don’t tell your bishop!).

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