album review: ‘mountainhead’ by everything everything

I don’t think I could have predicted the swerve Everything Everything made in 2022 with Raw Data Feel.

Before that album, Everything Everything had approached greatness before with Get To Heaven in 2015, but their following two albums just couldn’t recapture that magic, often feeling like frustrating thematic misfires as much as the compositions didn’t have that same punch; hell, even for as much as I liked Get To Heaven, it often felt like an ascent that never quite went over the top, an album I definitely respected more than I loved. And while embracing poppier, alternative dance textures helped amplify their melodic instincts to a different level - I tend to be a big fan when progressive-leaning acts go pop and bend melodic intricacies to catchiness - when you paired it with writing that took its deflective weirdness to paradoxically expose a raw, vulnerable human core, it gave Everything Everything a newfound populism that I found really endearing, one of the biggest surprises and best albums of that year, including two of my favourite songs of 2022! Hell, you can argue they were one of the few musical acts that effectively used large language models - which has colloquially been rebranded, mostly incorrectly, as “artificial intelligence” - to make an artistic point in highlighting digital isolation and obfuscation, rather than just use it to cut corners.

So I was deeply curious where their follow-up would take them - reportedly doubling down on the electronic pop textures but a return to higher concept themes, I knew they wouldn’t have that element of surprise that came with Raw Data Feel that inevitably helped amplify the initial experience, but this was a band that I could reasonably trust would stick the landing - was I right in that?

Well… okay, the first major observation is that, as I said, this album just doesn’t have that element of surprise - the band is still experimenting within this lane, but we know Everything Everything can pull off this sound and they feel a bit more surefooted in this space. But this can translate to their advantage as well, and while Raw Data Feel could wind up a little scattered and meandering by design, Mountainhead necessarily is more focused and driving, pulling some of the bombast of previous Everything Everything albums into the picture but importantly not sacrificing their populism in its wake. Some of this is helped by a pretty universal choice of themes - that could almost feel a little obvious coming from Everything Everything, to be honest - but it’s not simply a screed compared to records like RE-ANIMATOR, there’s an impressive amount of detail and nuance that the more listens I gave this, the more I was convinced that we really have something special that might not hit the steep highs of Raw Data Feel, but might wind better as a whole, potentially one of the best of this year!

And I want to start with those themes and the higher concept: a society are fixed on building a giant mountain by excavating a giant pit, where as time passes the mountain gets steeper and the pit gets deeper and those digging have forgotten why they even do as they’re egged on by Hell-Kite priests, with legends of a giant golden serpent at the deepest recesses of the pit and at the very top of the mountain, a giant mirror that shows endless images of the self. But when you couple it with suspiciously modern lyrical references, it becomes obvious this is all metaphorical - it’s about modern late-stage capitalism, and it’s not especially subtle about it; hell, on the second song you literally get lines like ‘it’s all about the benjamins’, which is distinctly funny for a UK band. Now this sort of large-scale societal critique is not new for Everything Everything - in fact, at first glimpse one might think the thematic arc behind Mountainhead is a little too obvious, especially given modern times - do we really need another model highlighting the hellish futility of the modern world, do they really have anything new to say?

Well funnily enough, they do, and it’s first important to note the framing and context, because like on Raw Data Feel, Everything Everything is trying to embrace a greater sense of populism and empathy, where not only do they speak on those trapped within the system feeling increasingly isolated and existentially drained, but those who are attempting to break out and those who buy in, where the tragedy manifests for both those who fail and succeed in that system. And while there are expansions of the ideas on Raw Data Feel - the isolation perpetuated by technology and social media - they take the smart route of highlighting how so much of that are reflections of human nature being warped through those tools; it’s less ‘machine bad’ and more ‘we don’t know the full ramifications of everything we’ve created, it’s an escalating and individualizing factor in the bad hierarchy we built’. And while Everything Everything touch on the pseudo-religious elements of this hierarchy - how so much of capitalism is really dependent on good faith - that’s not all that new for them, nor is the expanded critique of machismo and how much men buy into these systems that they don’t understand but offer some kind of reward… at least until they get thrown aside as disposable. Where this album really shines is interweaving all of these threads as compounding factors, like on ‘The End Of The Contender’ - reportedly inspired by an older ex-boxer who went viral for a road rage incident, what’s so notable is the sense of privilege that the cops of course will be on his side; he’s part of a world that made sense before but doesn’t anymore, and the directionless rage and fear of losing power in a world that’s passed him by. He’s not particularly smart - nor are the guys consumed by hatred of ‘cancel culture’ on ‘Buddy, Come Over’ that see themselves spiral down the black pill, or on ‘Canary’ where he’s bought into the excavation of the pit so fully to feed the mountain, getting relentlessly exploited by those higher in the system where he’s convinced there’s a greater reward beyond being… well, the canary in the coal mine - but where Everything Everything used to write about these guys with contempt, there’s now a strange empathy, or at least acknowledgement of the systemic factors that led them to this place.

But they aren’t the sole focus either - ‘Cold Reactor’ speaks to that common man who is isolated and drained within a system he doesn’t understand and doesn’t care about him, aware of the sword of Damocles above him but what else can he do - later echoed on ‘City Song’ where he calls in to his job and says he’s not coming in, and they don’t even know his name… but they at least pay, maybe that’s enough? And that lingering isolation also spills over onto a cut like ‘R U Happy?’ where in order to feel anything, they’re encouraged to keep digging, fuel that hierarchy… but not to the great serpent at the deepest point, representative of a raw human id that can be of solace when you’re at the lowest point. It’s a symbol that serves a lot of purposes - for those purposely buying into capitalism and feeding the grifters, it’s the place where they can no longer be controlled, where those seeking escape or to overthrow the hierarchy crave that wild emotionality… but that’s a double-edged sword of its own, it’s very telling that this album doesn’t really indulge a revolutionary fantasy; how very English of them. Of course, the flipside to all of this is ascending the mountain, trying to find a way to ascend the snake-oil hierarchy on ‘The Mad Stone’, running on pure individualist fervor, where emotionality becomes a weakness to be exploited as the metaphor morphs into that of cutthroat commodification and slaughterhouses, where ironically in forging a human connection they’re able to get higher on the mountain than ever, reach that great mirror at the top and enter it… only to find a sprawling, Kafkaesque hollowness at the center, an aimless decadence where they can spend your money and still not be satisfied, showcased in effective detail on ‘Your Money, My Summer’. Material pleasures, sure, but you’re always at risk of being dragged back, and nothing to fill that empty hole within as you’re lost in a hall of mirrors. And that’s pretty bleak but realistic - no matter where you fall within capitalism, while there are materially better places, the cost to get there will often strip of your humanity and it doesn’t really satisfy, the only place that tangible joy can seemingly be found is with other people, which is why the album ends on ‘The Witness’, where despite humanity’s eminent and obvious failings within these systems, and the ineffable knowledge of all of it, there’s still a hope to keep going; it’s life, what else can you do?

So all of that is a lot, and true to Everything Everything the lyricism is tangled and frequently obtuse, and Jonathan Higgs’ unique voice bends and soars across his register to sell all of it - where for Raw Data Feel it worked to intensify the uncanny, deflective vibes of that project here it works to create that lingering feeling that something is fundamentally wrong with this system and we don’t fit cleanly within it. And yet, for as many oblique and strange turns, the impeccably balanced and groovy pop focus is still firmly on display… although it seems like Everything Everything are bringing more of their old stately touches to a number of songs, like the huge stately plucks, strings and overdubbed vocals of ‘The Mad Stone’ that’s probably the most idiosyncratic hook the band pulls off on the album and one of my favourites! This also comes through adding a bit more tasteful reverb to amplify that uncanny, haunted negative space on the keening ‘Buddy Come Over’, the echoing metallic loneliness of ‘R U Happy?’, or the hazy atmospherics of ‘City Song’, that at least at first felt like it was softening the band’s edge even further - the extended, buzzy solo that opens ‘Wild Guess’ never quite cracks as loudly as you’d expect, ‘TV Dog’ feels a bit abbreviated, and the oily bounce of ‘The End Of The Contender’ is a bit softer, even if there it kind of works to play up the relative impotence of the song. But their infectious gift for hooks takes the echoing vocal fragments and coursing bass of ‘Cold Reactor’ and balances it with wells of analog synth for terrific melodic interplay, or the gurgle of synth breaks into ethereal swells and swampy bass against the borderline-trap drum machines of ‘Canary’ - all the more effective on ‘Dagger’s Edge’ - to the stacked vocals and aching strings against the pulsating house beat of ‘Don’t Ask Me To Beg’. But what might be most uncanny are ‘Enter The Mirror’ and ‘Your Money, My Summer’, where you hear gentle, reverbed, borderline reggae grooves that the band themselves have admitted they would have avoided in the past for sounding too much like the Red Hot Chili Peppers, although they remind me a lot more of twenty one pilots. Of course there are details that add a little more deceptive punch - the explosive guitar-driven climax on the former, the washed out menace of the latter that transitions incredibly well into ‘Dagger’s Edge’ - but I actually don’t think it’s a bad comparison in how the sound design augments the themes at the core; all sorts of chill vibes, but there’s something just ever-so-slightly ‘off’ about them as a whole. And that works for songs that are enticing and remarkably catchy, but also feel alienating in the fine details, where if you get what’s going on it’s a little perverse to enjoy it, while ending the project with the barest flicker of hope.

So to bring it together, if Raw Data Feel was the swerve and shot in the arm Everything Everything needed to reinvigorate themselves, Mountainhead is them swinging for the absolute fences with it - a stunningly layered, colourful, idiosyncratic, and shockingly catchy project that might be their absolute best to date. I know for fans of Get To Heaven that’s a tough sell, although I would say you’d probably have more luck with this project given its themes and some callbacks both lyrical and sonic, but this really is special. Like with any album from this band, there’s a barrier to entry when it comes to Higgs’ voice and their uncanny vibes as a whole - I’d probably recommend Raw Data Feel first as an entry point for non-fans before this - but if you’re looking for a smart, meaty album, this is a mountain worth climbing, with more than just a mirror at the end.