Review Summary: Songs that didn't make the cut for EE's last album shockingly don't work here, either.
Everything Everything (EE), since 2015, has been a band centered around politics. Their first two albums from 2010 and 2013 would feature that same art (rock/pop) style they have since come to enhance, yet they were relatively calm and inoffensive. Their third effort Get To Heaven started to introduce themes like failing political climates, dystopian worlds, and a violent revolution. That style of writing seemed to reach its apex in 2017, with EE's fourth album A Fever Dream. Even to a fault, their criticisms of vaguely familiar governments encompassed the composition of every song.
A Deeper Sea is A Fever Dream's companion EP, and it's centered around two main showpieces that tie into themes present in their last album.
The first one,
The Mariana, displays EE's warm and atmospheric side. It talks about being brought into a very unknown place supposedly by the Devil, being in a literal 'deep sea'. It is not flashy at all, and remains subtle with only minor effects and vocal tweaks to provide the flair. There does seem to be some randomly-generated manipulations in the first half that are not necessary, and thrown in for the sake of being more detailed than the song actually needs to be. It's fine, but the following track
Breadwinner presents a completely different side of the band. More specifically, it showcases how they will occasionally go wrong. Every single phrase is either some jumble of buzzwords that relates to nothing, or a joke. EE are parodying their own political twists by completely saturating this one song with nothing but that. Unfortunately, I have come back to the song numerous times since first listen, which invalidates my point of it being a bad song. Once someone analyzes deeper than its surface, though, there is no evidence of effort that's anything more than the minimal amount.
The last two songs on
A Deeper Sea admittedly do not matter very much. One is a remix of EE's single-worthy track
Ivory Tower by someone who goes by Tom Vek. The original vocal track stays the same most of the time, but it deviates very wildly towards the end of the remix. What started out as an unflustered delivery shifts abruptly into a rough, overly excited interpretation of the chorus. The instrumental behind it all is fitting enough, sounding like the original song with more of a dance floor vibe infused. That chorus at the end is so upsetting to hear, though, and it harms whatever formalities the remix had at first.
A Deeper Sea concludes with a cover of Neil Young's
Don't Let It Bring You Down. Mentions of dead men laying on the side of the road do fit snugly into EE's lexicon, but the fact that this song's performance topples any other song on the EP is sad. It's the one song on here they didn't write, and it remains the greatest.
With four songs, two they didn't make and two forgettable throwaways,
A Deeper Sea is far from Everything Everything's crown jewel. The album that spawned it is also not their magnum opus, but it hints at a more experimental and dense style. Keeping this in mind, they have expressed an interest in taking that sound and wringing it out wholeheartedly on their next album. Listeners can hope that, whatever the band decides to do next, they can ditch the immature argot and vapid production that stood out slightly on A Fever Dream, and overwhelmed this EP.
