Everything Everything and Risk-taking in Pop

Later this month, Manchester band Everything Everything will release their second album, Arc. If the reception from their first album and early singles from this one are any indication, it will make a reasonable splash in the UK and have little to no impact elsewhere.

To be fair, their modest profile is understandable and there are plenty of downsides to the group. Most notably, singer Jonathan Higgs’s voice is objectively bad. He has limited range, often sounds off-key, and is at times barely even comprehensible. His only real saving grace is an excitable charisma that truly shines about every third song, though to Higgs’s credit he imbues those songs with a remarkable amount of life.

Perhaps even more damaging to their success, the band doesn’t fit into many niches. They are highly unhip, even in this geek-chic era. Also, their sound often occupies an awkward space, too leftfield to be immediately catchy but also too pop-oriented (read: fun) to be fully embraced as “serious” independent music.

But despite their faults and lack of viability to many listeners, Everything Everything shouldn’t be ignored. They are one of the more musically daring groups around. More specifically, they’re one of the most inventive bands in their generation to use traditional rock instrumentation.

One demonstration of their creative vision is their name. For how generic it comes off as, it is a near-perfect description. Their songs are packed to the brim with well, everything: sounds and words all come at the listener at a breakneck speed. They’re the rare band that talks about having an endless list of influences and have a sound that lives up to that: their music frequently displays signposts from alternative rock, 90s pop, modern R&B, and more. And yet despite their myriad influences, the band has managed to carve out a fairly distinct and cohesive sound.

Even more importantly than their ability to effectively package sensory overload, Everything Everything isn’t afraid to fail and they don’t particularly mind being disliked. In an interview, Higgs was asked about his feelings on being panned quite thoroughly by Pitchfork (3.8). He jokingly responded that they were hoping for a 3.9 and then talked about how he would prefer to be hated than viewed as mediocre, citing his least favorite review as a three out of five. Of course, this isn’t an uncommon response to negative criticism, but I tend to actually believe it from Higgs for a couple of reasons. To be blunt, someone with his vocal limitations has to be ready to embrace vitriol.

Also, the band seems to almost court hatred. One of their biggest hits and best songs, “Photoshop Handsome” is a series of meditations on image editing. Musically and lyrically, the band dares the listener to roll their eyes at every turn, and a lot of listeners will do just that. But on this song at least, I think a significantly larger contingent will chant along and even join in with the band’s jerky dance motions.

This daring and almost confrontational approach stands in sharp contrast to many of today’s most critically lauded bands. Taking a look at Pitchfork’s list of the best albums from 2012, particularly what falls under the broad pop/rock umbrella, there’s nothing that I would blatantly object to, but there’s also not much that really thrills me. The albums are supremely crafted but generally in familiar ways.

Two albums in particular on the list, Bloom by Beach House and Tame Impala’s Lonerism are highly reminiscent of specific sounds: late 80s dream pop and Revolver-style psychedelia. While both albums update the production of their source material, the synth-featuring Lonerism in particular, neither make substantial departures from their source material.

This isn’t to criticize either band. They both made excellent pop albums with well-developed and singular visions. This is not easy and shouldn’t be trivialized. But it is safe. There is an unfortunate lack of truly daring albums that garner high critical acclaim. From the rest of the list, Grizzly Bear’s Shields is a step out of their own personal comfort zone, but that isn’t saying all that much. Visions is certainly experimental and Grimes’s sound casts a broad net. But she is also too stuck in the bedroom to make music that sounds great anywhere else.

Fiona Apple and Swans did make the top 10 with uncompromisingly creative albums. But that’s what we’ve come to expect from them both. Their albums stay pretty close to a well-beaten trail and for the purposes of this article it doesn’t really matter that they blazed the trails themselves.

The only possible exception is Chromatics, whose album Kill For Love features a diverse, expansive sound that doesn’t sound too much like anything else. But it still isn’t a particularly daring album. The group made an album that is interesting and enjoyable to listen to. But it doesn’t do much else.

In fairness to Pitchfork, some albums in the top 10 do what I’m describing. Both Kendrick Lamar and Death Grips released albums that are musically ambitious and completely uncompromising, but hip hop and however-Death Grips-wants-to-describe-themselves lend themselves to this more easily than pop and rock music.

It is only the rare group that has an adventurous, uncompromising sound that is diverse but consistently unique, isn’t afraid to take serious risks, but still manages to maintain critical and commercial success. Probably the last group to unequivocally meet all of the qualifications was Radiohead, but they have become much safer over the past decade. You can make a decent case that the White Stripes were such a band, though they never quite ventured out of blues rock far enough to be a safe bet. These bands should transcend categorization. Animal Collective flirted with being such a band in their early days, but they have since contented themselves with languishing in the indie malaise.

Several bands seem primed to take the step towards becoming such a band but are consistently held back. My personal favorite contender is Liars, but in over a decade they still haven’t accomplished much commercial success or a true signature Great Album.

To be clear, I don’t have any pretensions that Everything Everything is anywhere close to fitting in this category. The aforementioned bands took a lot of risks, but those risks nearly always paid off. They were willing to be hated but for the most part were widely loved. While its still early, Everything Everything’s hit to miss ratio will probably never be high enough. However, they give me hope that such a band can still exist.