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May 27, 2020 Everything Everything By Christopher Roberts

British art-rockers Everything Everything are releasing a new album, Re-Animator, on August 21 via Infinity Industries/AWAL. Now they have shared a video for the album’s previously shared single “Arch Enemy.” The band’s frontman Jonathan Higgs directed the strange partially computer animated video, and also appears in it. Watch it below.

A press release describes the concept of the video in greater detail: “Deep under the heart of the city, an ever-swelling fatberg expands at an ominous pace until it explodes and floods upwards through the sewage system. The congealed mass then submerges the city, swamping everything in its wake. The video presents a playful and nightmarish take on the song’s narrative, in which a modern-day protagonist prays to a sentient fatberg and wills it to purge the decadent world above that has created it.”

Higgs had this to add: “I made this video together with an old school friend, with whom I used to draw the most insane and grotesque things. We let our imagination run wild to bring the fatberg to life and create a world of friendly horror.”

In April the band shared the album’s “In Birdsong,” via a video for the track that was one of our Songs of the Week. Then when the album was announced they shared “Arch Enemy,” which was also one of our Songs of the Week.

The album was recorded last December at RAK studios in London with producer John Congleton (St. Vincent, Sharon Van Etten, David Byrne). Prior to that there was a year of writing and demoing. A press release points out that for this album the band wanted to focus “on harmonies and melodies over synths and programming.”

In terms of lyrical themes, the album tackles “wonderment at the wider world despite the horror of its politics; existentialism and the prolonged, if fading, youthfulness of being in a touring band; and the ominous threat of climate change. All things which contribute to a sense of one door closing while another awaits.”

Frontman Jonathan Higgs also became interested in the theory of the bicameral mind, as put together by psychologist Julian Jaynes. The press release explains the theory: “It argues that early in human evolution, the two sides of the brain were next to each other but functioned independently. In essence, one side would hear the other sending instructions via a disembodied voice—a zombie-like state of pre-consciousness.”

Higgs further expounds: “This idea of the divided self captivated me. Jaynes attributes this to the origin of gods, people ascribing deity status to this voice they could hear in their head. All this blew my mind, and I started thinking of ways I could make this a central concept. It really touched me. So across the whole record there are millions or references to this theory—to having a split brain, two selves, hearing voices.”

Of the new single, Higgs had this to say: “‘Arch Enemy’ sees a modern-day protagonist searching for a meaningful God. Finding only a congregation of greed, toxicity and waste, in the form of a sentient fatberg in the sewer, he duly prays to it, willing it to purge the decadent world above that has created it. These growing grease mountains are a curious juxtaposition of the modern and the ancient; a brand new example of archaic squalor.”

The band also features Jeremy Pritchard (bass), Michael Spearman (drums), and Alex Robertshaw (guitar). Their last full-length was 2017’s Mercury Prize-nominated A Fever Dream, although they released the Deeper Sea EP in 2018.

Read our 2017 interview with Everything Everything on A Fever Dream.

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