Everything Everything – Interview – June 2011
Here at Rockfeedback, we love Everything Everything a whole bunch. It’s always good to catch up with old chums, so I managed to accost them at Parklife Festival in Manchester a couple of weekends back to talk new material, weather and Enya.
How is it to be back in Manchester, since you guys originally formed here?
Jeremy: Yeah, it’s nice to play a proper festival on home soil. We’ve not really done a proper outdoor festival here before – well, there’s not really been any during our time as a band, apart from obviously this one last year. But it’s always nice to be home because we rarely are! We’ve got a bit of time off at the beginning of next week just to be at home which will be nice.
Yeah, because you formed at Salford University right?
J: Yeah, John and I went to Salford University and formed a sort of prototype version of this band there and then changed the line-up a lot. That band was just Thing Thing at that point.
Or Every Every.
J: Just Everything, really. Then it sort of expanded from there.
How’s the new album shaping up? Are you going to be treating the Parklife crowds to any new stuff while we’re here?
J: It’s going well, we’re starting to get a rough idea of the shape and sound of the new record.
Michael: I think – in a good way – we’re kind of limited to just guitars and a bit of synth, and we want to make sure that the songs work within those parameters before we start adding other people. We want them to be strong songs, that’s the main thing, and then anything else apart from that is a bonus. They’ve got to stand up as songs by themselves, and we can’t rely too much on technology or … choirs or anything like that.
Is Man Alive [Everything Everything’s 2010 debut] sort of done and dusted now then?
J: I think so, at least insofar as headline shows go. We’re doing two gigs on the south coast because we didn’t do any south coast gigs during our little May headline tour, so we’re sort of filling in and warming up for the festivals at the same time. Then there’re the festivals of course, but they’re not your own shows and you don’t have as much control over the aesthetics. So it basically is, as far as headline touring is concerned, but the songs are alive still. We’re obviously looking forward to the festivals and stuff, but we’ve been touring almost constantly for about 18 months or 2 years and it’ll be nice to take a break for a while to, er…
Get back to sunny Manchester?
J: Yeah, write some songs in rain-soaked Stockport.
The weather’s being very changeable at the moment…
M: Well it’s sunny now!
Yeah, but it was hailing an hour ago. I read somewhere that Manchester is the eighth-wettest city on the planet.
J: Yeah, I’d been wondering if it was actually the most wet. I mean, Seattle’s got to be up there, and probably, like, Monsoon City in Guatemala.
M: Manchester’s just like Guatemala, really…
Exactly. Anything the Parklife crowd can expect in terms of new stuff?
J: We are going to play one of the more festival-ready new songs, but we were debating this yesterday in rehearsals – do we play more new stuff because we’re on home turf and a lot of people will have seen us before? We’ve never played to thousands of people in Manchester before, like this will be, so a lot of people will be seeing us for the first time. And we’re still setting out our stall really, we’re still a new band, so we’re both representing the album and one new song.
Is the new stuff in general more festival-friendly?
J: Well that one certainly is.
You’re not going to ‘do an Enya’ are you? [Not really sure what I meant by this…]
J: ‘Do an Enya’? What did Enya do?
Well, it’s debateable… [nice save Fred]
J: Well ‘doing an Enya’ has never been on the whiteboard, so no, not really.
M: However, we do come up with a lot of terrible bands to avoid. We’ll be playing something and go ‘oh, it sounds a little bit like …’ Who have we had this week?
J: Incubus came up this week, let’s not do that.
Please don’t do that!
M: We’ll try. Enya hasn’t come up yet, maybe haven’t quite entered into that world yet.
J: I like some Enya though. Some Enya’s good. The pop-ish end of Kate Bush, almost.
Or a really shit Bjork…
J: Yeah, a latent, shit Bjork.
Artists in this article: Everything Everything