many people and everyone wants their angle. Some of them don’t care too much about the facts, but thankfully we’ve been spared any real big embarrassments, or pissing off anyone that we respect. Moving on, I was so astounded back in 2010 that some of your older material had been written back in 2005, like ‘Weights’ - it was really progressive. Was there any pressure, either from yourselves, or from others, to keep it progressive? Yeah, of course; we do put pressure on ourselves not to sit back and do ‘Man Alive’ again, and also progression for us is almost a little bit backward, I think, because we found that we weren’t really making the right emotional connection with the first album, or the connection that I wanted, really. We really had to step back a bit and not be so concerned with the complexity and clever cleverness of ‘Man Alive’ and just wanted to make things a bit simpler, and easier to understand – more about the feel than how clever everything was. So that’s what we tried to do, to be moved more.
I read an interesting quote from you that said, “We’d have hated ourselves if we’d have made the same record back then,” – is it maybe a sign of maturity, allowing yourself do what you like, rather than what you think is expected of you? Yeah, I think it is; there’s a level of confidence you need, I mean, we’re pretty cynical and we’ve always been quite cynical about things and been quick to criticise ourselves, and I think if we’d have tried to write a song like ‘Duet’, say, from this latest record, we would have all said, ‘Oh, it’s too cheesy – too pop. Where’s the edgy, like, new thing about it?’ Now I’m very pleased to stand here and say I wrote that song; I think it has a good melody and good words and that’s final, you know what I mean? Back then we were far less confident and we wanted to cover everything in distractions so that no- one could call us on it, because no-one knew what the hell was going on!
[LAUGHS] But we all loved it, and we still do. You talk of confidence now, which can be heard I think in ‘Choice Mountain’ from the new album, but listening again, I think you can also hear it in ‘NASA is On Your Side’ from the first album – - Yeah, I guess ‘NASA…’ is quite similar, in the way it sounds, to this album more than ‘Qwerty Finger’ or something; it’s much more about the melody and progressing through the song in a natural melody, rather than going along and something grabs you.
But then again, I don’t think people quite connected with the lyrics of ‘NASA…’, so that would be the big change, of course, is how much people can understand, because of how much I give them to understand! It’s not like people are stupid, it’s that the lyrics can be very cryptic at times, so I tried to straighten them out a lot more.
Of all the awards that you’ve been nominated for, I imagine that for you personally, the Ivor Novello nominations must have meant a lot to you, especially when people spend most of their time saying your lyrics are indecipherable! Yeah, I think that one was the one that meant the most, and obviously the Mercury was incredible, but for me personally, the Ivor Novello awards are for the songwriting, and with me being predominantly the songwriter, it felt amazing, especially
man. He recognised who I was the first time he came round, so he’s just given me a free bike repair!
No way! Yeah, I gave him some tickets to the show and he was like, ‘oh, cool – I’ll do your bike for free.’ Tat’s one of the perks!
Tat’s the thing with having your face on the front of the cover for the new album though, isn’t it – is that a bit of a weird one? Yeah, it is, although it was completely intentional; it sort of fits in with how we wanted the music to be received and perceived as us coming out of our shells a lot more, and breaking down the barriers that we put up with our first album, the complexness and the lyrics you couldn’t understand – the fox on the cover! No-one had any idea how to connect with it, so we kinda thought we’re doing the right thing musically, so the best idea is to put ourselves on there and then everyone knows what’s going on, which was a big step for us too.
Yeah, yeah! And you get your bike fixed for free – it’s a win all round. [LAUGHS] Yeah!
Norwich Arts Centre on February 8th. Tickets are sold out, but call the NAC Box Office on 01603 660352
for
returns.Read the uncut version of this interview on
Outlineonline.co.uk
with everyone around us saying, ‘what is this? We can’t make head nor tail of it.’ Tat was incredible, yeah; I’d love to have another one of those [LAUGHS].
You guys have been credited as kind of paving the way for bands like Alt-J, even in this short time, to be unfaithful to the notion of genre, even within the same song – is genre irrelevant now? No, I don’t think any genres are irrelevant; I think the media picks and chooses what’s hot right now, and there’s always a fan-base for it, even if that genre is ‘new music’, people will latch on to what it’s like, regardless of what it is, you know. Like, it’s grunge again and as long as it’s repackaged, there’ll always be someone there for it. Sorry, can I just do something for one minute… [Jonathan disappears for a moment] Sorry about that, I was getting my bike fixed by the bike
Everything Everything play the
Translating the new album to a live environment – has that been difficult at all? Erm, I think it’s been challenging simply because we’ve found we’re running out of hands and I’ve been unhappy for a long time, standing there playing the keyboard. To be honest, I felt like it was another barrier between me and the audience, literally this time. Like, ‘it’s strange music they play, and you can’t get close to them. He’s stood there behind the keyboard and barking all these lyrics you can’t understand!’ I just cut it all out and you can make much more of a connection.
It’s a big evolution from three years ago –
- Yeah, big time!
So you must be excited – you’re coming to Norwich next month – not just excited about Norwich, obviously – - Oh, I am, I am!
You’re gonna bring us a cracking new show, and I wondered what, as an audience, we can bring for you? Just learn the songs. Tat’s all you can ever do. Listen to the music and bring an open mind!
Emma Garwood
outlineonline.co.uk / February 2013/ 13
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