Everything Everything live in London: a celebration for a relentlessly inventive band

It’s hard not to feel that London’s Troxy is the perfect venue for Everything Everything to showcase their new album ‘Mountainhead’. The historic Art Deco building – built in the capital’s East End in 1933 – lends itself well to the band’s intricate, carefully considered visuals; this is the penultimate night of a UK tour that feels like it’s hitting a lavish crescendo.

They begin with the ‘Mountainhead’ triple whammy of ‘The Mad Stone’, ‘Wild Guess,’ and ‘The End of the Contender’, frontman Jonathan Higgs’ trademark falsetto on point throughout. It might be the band’s seventh album, but there’s no risk of them feeling stale – the new releases revolves around the concept of humanity building a giant mountain and escaping a huge golden snake: it’s one of their most creative, innovative albums yet and this opening trio are some of its strongest moments.

With new material as thrilling as the aforementioned, and a decade’s worth of releases in the locker, getting the setlist right can prove a daunting task. During their career, their sound has veered from frenetic indie to glitchy electronica via proggy pop. An album band at heart, they’ve done dystopian concept records and dabbled in AI – how do you keep everyone happy in 20 songs?

A good chunk of the setlist is from ‘Mountainhead’, but it also runs the gamut from 2010’s ‘Man Alive’ up to their latest release. And whether they’re working through their biggest hits (‘Kemosabe,’ ‘Distant Past’), fan favourites (‘Pizza Boy,’ ‘Violent Sun’) or ‘Mountainhead’ album tracks (‘Dagger’s Edge,’ ‘Enter the Mirror’), it’s striking how slick and cohesive they sound: Michael Spearman’s tight drumming and Jeremy Pritchard’s polished basslines form the backbone, with Jonathan Higgs and Alex Robertshaw on vocals and lead guitar respectively. Their cohesiveness is perhaps clearest on ‘Night of the Long Knives’, however, which is Higgs’ strongest vocal performance of the evening.

Come ‘Cough Cough’ with the crowd providing the staccato vocals in the intro, a few polite mosh pits begin to open up, while the atmosphere for early cult favourite ‘Photoshop Handsome’ is, frankly, ridiculous. ‘Distant Past’ finishes the main set, before an encore of ‘Cold Reactor,’ the lead single from ‘Mountainhead,’ and ‘Spring / Sun / Winter / Dread’ and ‘No Reptiles,’ two big hits from 2015’s ‘Get To Heaven’, hammer home the strength of the band’s discography. Though Everything Everything are touring ‘Mountainhead’, it feels like a greatest hits show at times, a celebration of all they’ve achieved so far.

Everything Everything will always have close associations with new technologies, but as tonight proves, they’re happiest on stage, creating new experiences with their fans in-person. Though they’re by no means an underground act – they’ve had four Top 10 albums in the UK – particularly with the glamorous, grandiose choice of venue tonight, it feels as though all of us there are in on something truly special and strikingly intimate.

Everything Everything played:

‘The Mad Stone’
‘Wild Guess’
‘The End of the Contender’
‘Pizza Boy’
‘Kemosabe’
‘Buddy, Come Over’
‘Teletype’
‘Metroland Is Burning’
‘Your Money, My Summer’
‘Violent Sun’
‘Dagger’s Edge’
‘City Song’
‘Enter the Mirror’
‘Night of the Long Knives’
‘Cough Cough’
‘Photoshop Handsome’
‘Distant Past’
‘Cold Reactor’
‘Spring / Sun / Winter / Dread’
‘No Reptiles’

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