Never Enough Notes e-zine // reviews + interviews + music

With their debut album Man Alive coming out in a few weeks time and critical praise coming in thick and fast, it’s an exciting time for Everything Everything. NEN attempted to find out what makes them tick.

Hi guys! Before we get onto the hardcore, highbrow, serious subject of music journalism and try to unravel the collective EE psyche….how on earth are you all?
Tired and disorientated, enjoying ourselves and constantly on the move.

Any messages you want to send out before we begin?
Yes we want to say thanks to Japan and Germany for coming out in droves to see us play, for some reason.

Ok, here we go. Is your band name a reference to the scope of your musical influences, or is there a story behind it?
Yes it is a reference to an oversaturated modern world, the choice we have, the media etc, we enjoy the rhythm of it and the feeling of possibility and optimism it creates too.

Your songs are very complex (compared to most other groups working in a band format these days). Is the act of songwriting a group activity, or are songs written alone and then developed together? Or is it a musical dictatorship?!
It begins on a guitar or piano or laptop, then moves to a laptop for a rough arrangement – then I take it to the band and we rewrite parts, change structure, add or remove things – improve it.

As well as managing to create a truly original sound, lyrics seem to occupy a central position in the EE persona. Can you talk briefly about lyrical inspiration, and whether your idiosyncratic, image-rich style is something that came naturally, or something that was created as a lexical equivalent of the complexities of the music?
It feels natural to write in a complex way because people think about more than one thing at once, I tend to write like I think and it’s unrealistic to talk about one subject when there’s so many things happening in the world, in your life, in your brain. I try to present lyrics with different levels of depth so you can delve into it if you like, or just take the surface meaning.

You seem like a very tight-knit group when performing live and in your videos. Is EE a group of best friends? Or are there ever any fallouts, arguments or midnight duels?
Yes we are all good friends and yes we argue all the time. Spending 95% of your time (including sleeping) with the same people creates very strong bonds and very irritating in-jokes.

It must be a pretty all-encompassing role, to be in a band as busy and as intricate as EE. Do you have time to indulge any other interests apart from music?
Basically no, we havent got time for anything outside the band. We watch films and try to see other bands when we can, but mostly we are trying to just relax when we have a day off. When things calm down a little and we have established ourselves more I would like to make some more films.

What new and/or old music has been most exciting you recently?
We watched an Arcade Fire DVD in the van the other day and it reminded us how amazing they are. Very into the second Bat for Lashes album at the moment too. There is a band from Glasgow called Babe that we have on in the van constantly.

As a group, do you prefer the gigging/touring side of things, or writing and recording in the studio?
They are very different, both are massive amounts of waiting punctuated with really exciting moments – for me the best thing in the world is the moment I write something new.

In a parallel universe, if things didn’t work out musically for EE, are there any other professions you can imagine yourselves happily entering into?
I have a big interest in film-making, we all have our plans for the apocalypse. We’ve talked about starting a scuba group.

Remaining in our parallel universe in which EE is no more: you each discover a time machine and have the ability to travel back and join any group you wish to from the past – which group would you join? Or would you meddle with time in any other way?
I’d join the beatles instead of Ringo. I’d also go back and stop Jimi Hendrix dying. Probably.

What is EEs manifesto? Are you just four guys having fun and writing the music you want to write, or do you have any specific aims/goals?
We want to always give the listener a feeling of possibility, a feeling of potentially anything happening. We aim to keep doing that until we get crap.

Interview by Greg Harradine