By: Chris Long
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Released on June 22, 2015 via Sony RCA
The journey from ambitious upstarts to musical greats is one which defeats many an act. Spurred on by early promise and exciting debuts, they jump recklessly for the big time too soon and fall into the murky waters of the also-rans, doomed to die by the law of diminishing returns as each subsequent album grasps more hopelessly at what could have been.
Unsurprisingly, as a band who wear their intelligence high and proud in their music, such a fate has not befallen Everything Everything. Five years ago, they announced their presence with the free-thinking debut Man Alive and followed it two years later, with the studied but occasionally over-cerebral Arc.
So far, so good – but there’s only so many critics and indie fanboys a band can please. At some point, a breakthrough must be made.
Get To Heaven is that breakthrough. As packed with genuinely toe-tapping tunes as it is with musical ideas, it is a non-stop ride of joy from the opening explosion of ‘To The Blade’ to the closing bass drift of ‘Warm Healer’.
Somewhat superbly, it also never compromises on the band’s ongoing mission to be utterly undefinable in terms of genre, managing to offer enough to please nodding musos, dancefloor aficionados and gig moshers equally.
Anyone who fell for the charms of the album’s two lead singles – the disjointed jerk of ‘Distant Past’ and infinitely chantable ‘Regret’ – will not be disappointed, but they are far from the only charms.
Elsewhere, the sprightly toe-tapping ‘Spring/Sun/Winter/Dread’ – a song which threads a line about a craven babboon into its crescendoing bridge – has potency and splendour, while the frantic ‘The Wheel (Is Turning Now)’ and the driven ‘No Reptiles’ show off the foursome’s skill of weaving styles and influences into blanket-thick unfathomable wonders.
Get To Heaven is, in short, a revelation. It is an album that shows of just what clever sods Everything Everything are without ever becoming pretentious and a collection that sparkles with confidence while avoiding bombastic ego.
Having come so close to matching their ambition with their achievement twice before, Get To Heaven finally announces the band on the major stage. From this point forward, they’ve got a hell of a lot to live up to.
