Interview: Everything Everything

Indie/dance four-piece Everything Everything are a band which seem to becoming increasingly popular as time progresses. Here’s what happened when TNS spoke to them about how they feel about the whole thing:

Did you think that you’d be as successful as you have been? Do you think the album’s been received well?

Jonathon Higgs (Vocals, Guitar, Keyboard, Laptop): The album has had good reviews but we still don’t feel any more successful than we did before; life hasn’t really changed because of it because we’d still be doing what we’re doing anyway.

Jeremy Pritchard (Bass Guitar, Keyboard, Vocals): No, I think that things have changed for us because now we have more creative control over what we do and we’re obviously playing to bigger audiences and to people that are familiar with our music.

What do you think helped you obtain this success? Do you think it was the amount of touring that you did?

Jonathon: I think the main reason that we have fans is because of the internet. The internet was the beginning for us and is so powerful these days; people are even still coming across our music simply via the internet now.

Alex Robertshaw (Guitar, Keyboard, Vocals): I also think that impressing the right people early helped as well. We managed to get Zane Lowe and NME interested pretty early on.

Jeremy: In Britain, because we’re such a small country, there is only one major radio station (Radio 1) and a major music publication (NME) and getting these people interested early gave us a huge boost because so many people read NME and listen to radio 1. We got a bad review from Pitchfork but because NME is so powerful all around the world, I think that our good NME review made up for it. Also, I do think that touring did help of course as we did do a lot of it and we did the NME Tour as well.

Mike Spearman (Drums, Vocals):The tour with Keane helped us a lot too as we were playing to hundreds of people every night and even now we get people saying “Oh, I saw you support Keane and that’s how I discovered you.”

Why did you re-release ‘Photoshop Handsome?’

Alex: I guess it just seemed like the right time to do it.

Mike: I don’t think that we have that many singles on the record and we just thought that this was a ‘single’ sort of track. It was also already there; it didn’t need much fiddling to release a radio edit.

Jonathon: The first time round, it was also on a very limited release on a small label. Zane played it but it didn’t go much further than that, it just got us the attention of some important people so that we could do another single, which then got us signed, so it just did its job really. We just thought that it’s a good song and that hardly anyone really got to hear it first time round so we released it again.

Did you meet in Manchester?

Jeremy: We all met in Manchester, well Alex lives in London but we all met in Manchester.

Article continues below...
More stories you may like...
Interview: She Drew The Gun
Women in Music: An interview with lighting designer Valeria Silva
Interview: M w S

How was the orchestral performance of ‘Man Alive’ for you?

Mike: Amazing, a truly emotional experience.

Alex: It was nice to hear the songs as a much bigger thing, rather than just quadrifocal really. It was exciting just to be in the room with all the different instruments going on around us.

When you signed to a major label (Geffen), did you feel pressured to change the sort of music you make to make it more poppy and commercial?

Jonathon: Well, we weren’t signed until we had a vast majority of the album already written. In fact, probably all of it and we didn’t really change anything in between writing it and recording it.

Jeremy: They really did leave us to our own devices as they never really did much checking up on us, which shows that they trusted us. Geffen said to us “we want to help you continue doing what you’re already doing”, which really does show that they had faith in us.

What is your opinion on Lady Gaga?

Alex: Her music’s just slightly better than average but she just contrives herself in an interesting way.

Mike: She’s a business woman.

Jeremy: She’s a business woman and a clothes horse and we ain’t, but she’s an integral part of popular music as was Madonna.

Will you be taking a break from touring now and focus on writing the new album?

Jonathon: Yeah, we’re taking breaks all of the time whenever we’re not gigging or doing press but there is a specific point now where we’re going to try and go into the studio without being disturbed and do some writing and rehearsing. We just try and write when we can as we can’t really stop because people will forget who we are and you can’t just say “oh, I’m going to be creative for this specific period of time.”

Do you think that the new album will be in a similar style?

Jonathon: I think it would be really hard not to do it in a similar style but lyrically, God knows.

Alex: I think that lyrically we’ll just be more developed.

Interview: Everything Everything

You might also like...

People who read this also read...