Everything Everything – ‘Mountainhead’ album review: An overblown yet loose concept
THE SKINNY: The other day, I read on the news that Nasa was looking for people to participate in a year-long Mars simulation test. To help the space cadets figure out if or when humans might be able to colonise the Red Planet and what the move might be like, they were after a bunch of “healthy and motivated” subjects with “a strong desire for unique, rewarding adventures”. I thought to myself, ‘What on Earth is adventurous about playing pretend astronauts in a warehouse with some red sand? Who would give up a precious year of their life for that?’ Upon listening to Everything Everything’s new dystopian concept album, I reason they‘d probably put themselves on the list. At the very least, they‘ve grown weary of Earth.
A concept album is always a tricky territory. Some people throw the term around like an overused buzzword to describe a record with the loosest thematic through-line or make up some story afterwards to try and sell it as such. Others commit too much to the concept and release an album that might have a tale to tell but is devoid of any hits. On Mountainhead, the band have managed to somehow do both.
“In another world, society has built an immense mountain,” the band wrote of the record as if it was the opening to Dune. “To make the mountain bigger, they must make the hole they live in deeper and deeper,” they add. “A ‘Mountainhead’ is one who believes the mountain must grow no matter the cost, and no matter how terrible it is to dwell in the great pit”. In short, their new album is one giant metaphor for the idea of conflict between the many and the few, about personal sacrifice for communal growth but also about mass hysteria and mob mentality as society bands together over imaginary threats and gains.
That concept could be cool on a grand rock opera scale if the band didn’t sound exactly the same on this album as they do on many previous efforts. If you ignore the lyrics, which are littered with loose dystopian and dramatic quips like “I love you like an atom bomb” or an overuse of the word “simulation”, the instrumental is the same rock band base with heavy textures of 1980s synths and electronic additions. There are some good music moments, though, and ‘Cold Reactor’ especially has some lovely key details and a nice rhythm to get heads bobbing. But for such an extravagant storyline and such a bold attempt to place themselves in the lineage of concept records, Mountainhead lacks the theatrical scale, falling limp at the feet of the tale they’ve supposedly written.
Yet, at the same time, the concept feels relentless, holding the listener hostage but not in a gripping way. By the time the record hits its second half, the loosely futuristic musical details added feel exhausting. If you’re not a fan of Jonathan Higgs’ unique vocals or the band’s love for effects, this isn’t the album that will turn you onto them. Throughout the record, the instrumentation stays maximalist and busy, with Higgs’ voice and their busy lyrics ending up feeling like a bombardment by tracks like ‘Enter The Mirror’ and ‘Don’t Ask Me To Beg’.
There are moments where I feel stuck in that warehouse with a bunch of nerds being yelled at about space, or why Star Wars is such a great metaphor for society, or how smart they are. Even though the story of Mountainhead gets lost to listeners that don’t want to trace every word and dig for meaning, the concept side of the record ends up feeling like just being hit over the head by excessively ‘innovative’ textures and faux-intellectual lines that sound like they could have been AI-generated.
Much like on Raw Data Feel, Mountainhead feels like a waste of a good indie band who are too bogged down with making everything clever. In trying to make ‘high art’, they’re sacrificing their actual art. Concept albums require such a delicate balance of commitment to the cause with a wider scope that is still considered the casual listener. In their attempt, Everything Everything fall flat in the middle, where weak messaging and overblown sounds manage to commit too much and not enough.
For fans of: Coding, fantasy films, and breaking up hours in the gamer chair by tweeting about bloody capitalism.
A concluding comment from a Nasa test subject: “I love this album!“
Mountainhead Track by track
Release date: March 1st | Producer: Kaines & Tom AD | Label: BMG
‘Wild Guess’: Dropping you right into some vocal effects without a second to spare, Everything Everything are wasting no time. As the doors are locked and their concept simulation is turned on, it’s a promising start that weakens the second the lyrics start. Headphone wearers, beware of the high notes. [2.5/5]
‘End Of The Contender’: “A bomb for a body, a hammer for a head, my battery’s a hundred per cent. It all makes sense.” It doesn’t, though, sadly. With no actual story set up beyond what I received in a PR pack and artist bio, the band expect an audience to keep up with a concept with context, just loose terms assigned a meaning in their mind and sung like they’re smart. [2/5]
‘Cold Reactor’: This song is the closest the album gets to a hit. If you ignore the lyricism, it’s catchy and fun, set for a stage at one of those festivals where the lineup is the same every year, and development means nothing. [3/5]
‘Buddy, Come Over’: The change in instrumental pace is nice here; it’s getting darker, slower, and moodier. With added guitar riffs allowed to sound like guitars, the grip of the story seems to loosen up on the music for just long enough to let me enjoy it. [3/5]
‘R U Happy?’: Everything about this song makes me groan, from the outdated slang title to the melodramatic but meaningless lyricism like “dance in a skeleton way” or “feel like an animal”. The instrumentation goes nowhere, too, making it a long filler. [1.5/5]
‘The Mad Stone’: Water drops and weird noises, how concept, how cool. This feels like the band’s attempt to be epic, but from the theatrical quick singing to the depth-less strings, it feels like a Lin Manuel Miranda song meets a video game soundtrack. There are moments where the instrumental can be nice enough, but the second you pay attention to the lyrics or the story, it collapses to cringe again. [1.5/5]
‘T.V Dog’: As with all the songs, the instrumentation is dynamic and busy. Here, the violin-led sound is genuinely interesting and gripping, but when vocal effects and Jonathan Higgs’ relentless falsetto is layered on top, it feels impenetrable. None of these tracks makes me feel anything, and while that isn’t always a necessity for a good album, this record lacks any level of humanity to get a hold of. [2/5]
‘Canary’: “We’re not profound, we’re just meat.” At least they’re self-aware. This sounds like a bad remix. [1/5]
‘Don’t Ask Me To Beg’: The remix energy continues with this running beat, and we’re back to feeling like we’re in a video game. Everything Everything first gained attention for their unique harmonies and have clung, desperately, to that one trick since. By track nine, it feels exhaustive when listened to in order like this, as sounds chop and change just enough to feel overdone but not enough to renew attention. [2/5]
‘Enter The Mirror’: They’ve seen Black Mirror, that’s the takeaway. They’ve seen the show and thought, “We could do that, but in song!” The result is a limp metaphor with a meaning so hazy that it falls to nothing but scattered, rhyming words on another busily layered instrumental. [1.5/5]
‘Your Money, My Summer’: Once again, there is a brief sigh of relief as the instrumental shifts, and a guitar sounds like a guitar again. The harmonies here are actually nice, as they sound like voices rather than vocoders. This is a good enough indie tune that provides a second to breathe and a reprieve to enjoy well enough. Remarkable? No. Better than most of the other songs? Definitely. [3/5]
‘Dagger’s Edge’: Lead with a lovely opening riff and once again ruined the second the words start. Very few people can pull off using the word “Dude”, and Everything Everything fall into the camp that can’t. [2/5]
‘City Song’: By this point, I feel like I’ve run out of ways to say it, so I’ll say it plainly. If you’re not an Everything Everything fan or aren’t super keen on Higgs’ voice, you will have turned it off by now. I’m sure there are ears that love his high vocal range and ever-echoing harmony; there are over 600,000 monthly listeners eating it up. However, my ears can’t seem to get on with it in this big of a dose when there never seems to be much switch-up. [2/5]
‘The Witness’: A concept album should have either a big finish or at least an emotive ending. This is neither, but I’m glad the curtain is closing. [2/5]
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