Art-rockers Everything Everything have already performed twice in Nottingham this year, having launched their latest opus Mountainhead at Rough Trade back in March before bringing the album to life at Rock City a month later in April. However, this their third show of the year in Notts was something a bit different, with frontman Jonathan Higgs and guitarist/producer Alex Robertshaw sitting down with BBC 6Music presenter Chris Hawkins, to talk through their career and play acoustic tracks from each of their albums. With the promise of a special night down at Saltbox, we went along to observe this unique event and report back what we learned…
Entering Saltbox on another busy Saturday night in the city centre, it’s unsurprisingly a full room, with the venue’s usual furniture laid out theatre style, with quite a few standing around the sides, at the back of the venue and even upstairs too. Not long after we arrive and get ourselves a drink, Chris Hawkins of BBC 6Music takes to the stage, introducing himself and his ties to Nottingham. It turns out the presenter went to university here, saying that tonight is his first return to the city since that period of his life. “After this, I’ll see you all down the Black Orchid!” he jokes, referring to the famous city nightclub which closed back in 1998.
He then runs through Everything Everything’s list of achievements, from their multiple Ivor Novello and Mercury Prize nominations to their five consecutive Top 10 albums, before then welcoming Jonathan Higgs and Alex Robertshaw from the band onto the stage to join him for a chat. “Why did you want to be in a band?” Chris asks first, with Jonathan’s simple, honest reply being “It seemed like a good life of doing fun stuff”. He goes on to talk about growing up with The Beatles and Simon & Garfunkel as influences, before deciding he wanted to be in a band from the age of thirteen. He also dives into how any successful band only makes it with a certain amount of luck, and that hundreds of great bands haven’t made it through simply not being in the right place at the right time.
The same question is then fired over to Alex, who impressively lists off the instruments he learned to play growing up: viola, cello, double bass. It wasn’t till age thirteen he started playing the guitar and informs the audience that he can now play most string instruments to some degree. “He is bad on the drums though, I can tell you that” chimes Jonathan.
Chris then leads the pair to describe the early formation of Everything Everything and how the two eventually met one another. Jonathan starts by talking about his high school bands, one called Mother Hubbard and another whose name I miss, but apparently it stems from a word that means a “Dinosaur’s butthole”. Nice! Once he moved onto the University of Salford, Jonathan says he wanted to get all the best people into one band, which he admits was a bit “Simon Cowell-y”. He then reveals that a misprint in NME led him and Alex to meet each other, after Everything Everything were mistakenly listed as Operahouse in the magazine, which was Alex’s band at the time.
Fate would have it that Operahouse would split up just as Everything Everything’s original guitarist (Alex Niven) left the band, leading Jonathan to reach out to Alex Robertshaw about joining as his replacement. The pair share a fun story of Jonathan taking Alex for a burrito, despite the singer hating spicy food. “He was beading (with sweat) and I just thought “gosh, he must be really nervous!”” laughs Alex, recalling that fateful meal. Jonathan then mentions how Alex came on board, learnt all the songs in two weeks and, as he shared the same first name as his predecessor, they just pretended to the record label that he was the guitarist all along.
Shortly after that, Everything Everything went straight into recording their debut album, Man Alive, which leads us nicely onto the first acoustic performance of the night – Photoshop Handsome from that very debut. After the exquisite stripped-back rendition, Jonathan describes how he wrote the song on his 24th birthday and how the lyrics are connected, but it’s not always obvious as to how exactly they’re linked. “Do your songs make sense?” bluntly asks Chris, with Jonathan replying that he doesn’t like to spoon-feed listeners, hoping they still get the feeling or vibe he is striving for, and then allowing them to interpret that as they wish. “I’m more coherent now I’d say, definitely less scatterbrain in the messaging” he adds.
Alex then honestly shares that he hasn’t listened to Man Alive once since its release back in 2010, before moving onto how streaming has dramatically changed music consumption since that time. “Everyone’s so focussed on the new thing, an album is essentially dead after the first week” he says, with his cynicism sadly anchored in reality. “You used to buy albums for £20 and then it wasn’t until you got home and played it that you found out it was s**t!” he jests, leading Jonathan to add that you’d then continue to play that bad album and find something good in it, just because you’d already spent money on it. Can relate to that one!
After then deviating into their big break occurring when famed Radio DJ Zane Lowe happened to see their music video for Suffragette Suffragette on TV, it’s onto another acoustic track. This time it’s a gorgeous performance of Radiant from Arc, their acclaimed sophomore record. Jonathan’s signature high-pitched vocals take centre stage on the song, leading Chris to ask him whether he’s ever had singing lessons or not. “I’ve never had singing lessons - which is probably why I sing a bit weird” he replies, going on to say how he started out trying to sound like Radiohead but then fell into a pattern of just doing a falsetto “whenever he needed it”.
It then moves onto a discussion about making the difficult second album, with Alex mentioning how most bands will have years of material built up to go into their first record, and often by album two they have to start over again fresh. They also mention how the slight change in style for Arc came about after supporting rock titans Muse, and how the material for Man Alive didn’t translate to the bigger venues. Alex also mentions how Arc was “more chilled out” than Man Alive, which means when he listens back now, he can find it “a bit of a drag”. Jonathan then talks about the band’s reluctance to work with a pop producer on that record as at the time they didn’t perceive it as being cool. “Are you cool?” asks Chris, with Jonathan’s sharp reply being “I don’t think it matters, and that’s the coolest thing”. It’s a response that draws big cheers from the audience, with Chris and Alex also smiling to the crowd’s reaction.
Chris then mentions how their best-loved record Get To Heaven turns 10 next year, which leads into a performance of their iconic track, No Reptiles. “If tonight was just that it would’ve been worth it, am I right? So glad you had that burrito” says Chris after Jonathan and Alex’s stirring rendition of their usual live set closer. “Is that your best lyric?” Chris then asks Jonathan, referring to the song’s chorus of “It's alright to feel like a fat child in a pushchair, old enough to run…” Jonathan laughs at the question before quickly retorting, “It’s the one that will be on my gravestone!”
The subject then quickly moves onto the band’s fifth album Re-Animator, with Alex admitting it was a strange time between the COVID lockdown and the band experimenting with a different way of working, both intentionally and unintentionally, given the global pandemic. It’s followed by a performance of Violent Sun off that record, which marks a brief intermission in the fascinating conversation. It’s noticeable that fourth album A Fever Dream has been skipped over entirely, and after the interval Alex reveals it’s because they just couldn’t get any of the tracks from that electronic-heavy album to work acoustically. Understandable, but a shame!
After the break, Chris also reveals a funny story of how he told the band to bring some merch with them to this show, and how hauling a suitcase full of t-shirts from their Stockport studio earlier in the day caused Jonathan to split his head open on an Uber car door. “So, buy some merch as they literally bled for it!” encourages Hawkins.
Discussion then moves into the band’s iconic boiler suits that have followed them throughout their career, with their origin traced back to the band’s first music video for Suffragette Suffragette. Alex explains how at one point they had tailored boiler suits, which caused all sorts of problems when switching on guitar pedal boards. “Turns out, boiler suits aren’t meant to be tailored – who knew!” he laughs. Jonathan also reveals that the baby featured in the Suffragette Suffragette music video is now 18 years old, making everyone in the room suddenly feel very old.
Talk then moves onto their sixth album Raw Data Feel, the first album produced by Alex. Jonathan reveals it was a decision that came out of not being entirely happy with how Re-Animator turned out, and particularly how it sounded. “There’s usually not much I’d change about our records once they’re out in the world, but with Re-Animator I remember wanting to change quite a lot” he says candidly. The pair then perform two tracks from Raw Data Feel, with Jennifer translating the best to the acoustic arrangement before a nice, rare outing for Born Under A Meteor too.
Chris asks Jonathan how he finds performing live, to which Jonathan replies “it’s unlike anything else in his life” and that “the best thing in life is feeling a connection with other humans”, with performing allowing him to get that connection on a large scale. “How do you cope with the lows then?” asks Hawkins curiously, to which Jonathan jokingly replies (but probably honestly too): “get p*ssed!” Alex then mentions the disassociation you can feel being in a band for so long, recalling how he shared band in-jokes from 12 years ago with family members, and then suddenly couldn’t remember why they were funny in the first place.
The trio then jump through a few topics in quick succession, such as bassist Jeremy’s brief time with Foals and some of the best bands they’ve played with, which included Keane, Muse and Snow Patrol (“very nice chaps, Gary (Lightbody)’s a wild one!”). They also discuss their multiple Mercury Prize nominations, which segways them into a discussion on how the prize means less now due to streaming, with people getting their recommendations from algorithms rather than stickers on a physical CD. They also mention how their whole life is based around the dying art of creating cohesive albums, with Alex and Jonathan then having a light-hearted argument about whether albums even need to have singles on them. “Kid A doesn’t have any singles on it!” states Alex, making a slick point for his case via the acclaimed Radiohead album from which their band name derives.
Finally, it’s then time to discuss their most recent effort – 2024’s Mountainhead. Chris asks the pair what it was like to make, and Alex openly shares that it was “hard work” before aiming a humorous dig at Jonathan that it was because “there was certain people too worried about making singles”. The discussion turns serious again as he talks about the album’s strict deadline, and the balance of making music while raising a family. He then mentions how Jonathan can become quite “p*ssed off and depressed” when creating albums and that during the making of Get To Heaven, he was in a very dark place. “Great album” says Jonathan with a wry smile, clearly able to laugh about it now a decade later.
It's one of the most revealing parts of the evening, with Jonathan agreeing with Alex’s assessment that he can be a “d**khead”, but that he “only gets like that cause he cares so much.” Alex then shares a funny story of one period when they were making Mountainhead where Jonathan was getting “intense and disappointed by everything” and he got a message from him that said, “I think this is the worst song we’ve ever made and I hate everything about it”. Then once the album was finished, he got another message from him saying “I’m at the gym and it’s all I’m listening to – it’s the best album we’ve ever made”. Alex laughs sharing the story, but then admits “he was broken by the end of it”, with Jonathan insisting that he’s just trying to ensure he gets the best out of him. “I’m producing the record and you’re producing me” says Alex, showing the pair may have their disagreements at times but still remain firm friends.
Chris then finishes the night by asking Jonathan if he still rates Mountainhead six months on from its release, to which Jonathan says he’s still very happy with how it turned out. They then end on an infectious performance of recent single Cold Reactor, which the pair reveal is now their “most popular song for a long time, all around the world”.
For fans of Everything Everything, this was an incredibly insightful and memorable evening, reliving the band’s journey from formation to Mountainhead, while also learning about the secrets of their craft. The performances were terrific but the open conversation with one of the country’s most consistently interesting bands was without a doubt the real highlight. As a group who clearly enjoys performing and coming to Nottingham, here’s hoping it’s not too long until they are back here again.
Everything Everything performed at Saltbox on Saturday 2nd November 2024
We have a favour to ask
LeftLion is Nottingham’s meeting point for information about what’s going on in our city, from the established organisations to the grassroots. We want to keep what we do free to all to access, but increasingly we are relying on revenue from our readers to continue. Can you spare a few quid each month to support us?
