Review Summary: 'Did you think that Everything, Everything would change?'
With the sweet taste of success pouring into the Manchester based art-pop group's mouths, Everything Everything have been moving away from the experimentation of their more avant-garde debut 'Man Alive' - gorging themselves on the praise of an accessible sound with their two latest albums. But if you look past 'Get to Heaven's singles it's clear that this album has not fallen dangerously far from the group's roots. It might even be fair to say that this fresh approach to art pop surpasses the group's previous attempts in creating such catchy tunes in 'Arc', resulting in 'Get to Heaven' creating harmony between both art and pop.
Although most tracks balance the group's accessibility and ingenuity, the album's singles 'Distant Past' and 'Regret' are so heavily dependent on the former that they often lose the band's charming creativity: – the pseudo-rap and Calvin Harris-esque chorus in 'Distant Past' and repeats of 'Regret' in its corresponding track are grating, but damn if these tracks aren't irritatingly catchy. A lot of the album follows these singles' in a predictable structure, but aren't as heavily dependent on choruses which makes this forgivable – but tracks like 'The Wheel (Is Turning Now)' and 'No Reptiles' are impressively unpredictable in their progressions which more than makes up for it.
Everything Everything's cornerstone has always been vocalist Jonathan Higgs' soaring falsettos and erratic shift in pitch, which remains prevalent and ever impressive in songs like the hard-hitting opener 'To The Blade' and 'Blast Doors'. Peculiar lyricism is also left untouched, where its absurdity is so common with Everything Everything that singing lines like “it's alright to feel like a fat child in a pushchair” seems completely ordinary. 'Get to Heaven's instrumentation mostly ranges from the eerie electronica of 'Fortune 500' to the hard rock onslaught of the explosive 'To The Blade', keeping true to the group's previous dabbling with these genres. But it's the introduction of bouncy and funky tunes such as the infectiously optimistic and charming 'Spring / Sun / Winter / Dread' and 'Get to Heaven' that bring an invigorating change that is welcomed with open arms.
The closest the band comes to their original sound is the final three tracks. The soaring vocal harmonies in 'Zero Pharaoh' are reminiscent of 'Weights' from the band's debut; the delicate opening to the 'Tin (The Manhole)'-like 'No Reptile' and the irregular beats of 'Warm Healer' hint towards influence from Radiohead's 'Kid A' and 'In Rainbows' – yet although these tracks may be more experimentally impressive, it's the previously mentioned poppy and funky tracks which remain embedded into the mind like an infatuating tumor.
Third time's a charm in Everything Everything's attempts to create experimental pop which can integrate seamlessly into the mainstream pop world. Despite there being little outright change to the band's formula, the new catchy funk tunes (and albeit their weaker singles) is what shift the scales to make 'Get to Heaven' an excellent album, sitting in a happy medium between the accessibility of 'Arc' and the experimentation of 'Man Alive'.
