Review Summary: Nothing but myself, and my dreams packed into a suitcase.
Sometimes an album just comes at the perfect time. That feeling that everything fits exactly how it’s supposed to fit. That the music and lyrics are the perfect representation of your life at that very moment in time. Enter ''Everything You Ever Loved’’ and my experience on first listen.
I was introduced to Make Do and Mend through their first full length, ''End Measured Mile’’, and I loved the hell out of it. The pure emotion, combined with the post-hardcore instrumentation really struck a chord with me. And for the longest time, this was my go to record. It was all I listened to. Then, in September of last year, I was accepted to do an internship on Lanzarote, Canary Islands. I was as happy as could be, away from home for half a year, on a quiet sunny island, surrounded by crystal clear water. Without any expectations at all, I went in. No friends. Nothing but myself, and my dreams packed into a suitcase.
In the beginning, I loved my time on the island. I met a lot of people to whom I grew very close. Staying up late, raving while drinking cheap booze on the beach, only to wake up late for work the morning after. It was a blast. For a long time I felt that I belonged to the group of people I was hanging out with. But as time went by, people started leaving and that’s when the happiness ended. For the first time in my life, I was lonely. I had nothing but a few people around me and the music on my mobile phone. The realisation that this rock had nothing more to offer but sun, beaches with crystal clear water, and cheap alcohol, ironically, shattered everything I came to love about it. That’s when I first heard ''Everything You Ever Loved’’.
From the first song, the album resonated with me. As James Carroll sings ''What if everything that you ever loved more than anything was killing you this slow? You’d let it go’’ on Blur. It made me realise there might be more than just the things I used to love. While ''Scratch your days in the wall. Count your nights like the friends that never call’’ on Count resembled perfectly how I felt, sitting in my room, alone. And Stay in The Sun made me worry that the people I loved back home would forget me, as time went by. I became emotionally attached to this album. For the first time in weeks I didn’t feel alone because I was relieved I was not the only one feeling the things I felt.
I became more confident because of it. And for the first time in weeks, I explored more than just the hotel I worked in. I could accept the fact that I was stuck on this island, with little to do. I started to see the beauty of the island, interacted with local people and began making new friends. Drinking with friends became fun again and drunken nights were, once again, more common than sober ones. ''Cause I’ve found something worth all I’ve given up’’ on Lucky started to make sense, as I was falling in love with a girl. And the lyrics on St Anne: “You’d be there for every time I lost my step. In a world that’s far too fast under my legs’’ were exaclty how I felt about her. But perhaps the most fitting song on this album was Dessert Lilly, with its beautiful instrumentation and James’ passionate vocal delivery on the albums most poignant lyrics:
''Come close, come close
I’ve paid my debt to distance,
And earned my share of home.
Sing slow, sing slow
So if I’m gone before the morning’s set aglow
You’re not alone’’
These lines summed up every morning, after I met her, perfectly. When it’s my time to go home, I will always have her in my memory.
I will always look back on my semester abroad with mixed feelings. The lows were often very low. And the highs very high. But I wouldn’t be able to look back on my adventure positively if it wasn’t for Everything You Ever Loved.
