Everything Everything in tier list
this was tricky for me to place. I like them, generally, they’re fun to listen to. Also really hard to listen to. They’ve got a real bad case of impossible-to-tell-what-on-earth-they’re-saying, and honestly even after I look up and read the lyrics I’m not sure that goes away, the lyrics are wack. And the music is… a lot, I just don’t have a frame of reference for it yet, it’s dense and (especially with their earlier stuff) not often intuitive. Also, just a note, not a fan of the constant falsetto, sometimes it wouldn’t be overly bothersome, but most often I found myself looking forward to any time he’d drop into his normal register. Overall though I like ‘em, particularly the first two albums and the last album. Curious to see if they become more intuitive for me- or rather, I’m curious to see what I think of them once they do become more intuitive for me
RELISTEN1: I admit I had pretty high hopes for this relisten. My complaints the first time around were fairly specific and also, I think, pretty get-over-able, as evidenced by the fact that I feel I’ve gotten over them. I still think they’re present and real, and I still think they’re worth noting, but they’re not bothersome to me in the same way they used to be. And the actual music, the fundamentals of the band, are so solid, I feel like I like them more each time they come up. So, this was the test, to find out if I do in fact like them more now than I did at first. And the answer is yes, I do!
One complaint was that I could never understand what the singer was saying. I definitely hear where I was coming from with that, and in a sense I stand by it because he’s really not easy to understand. Some of that is the way he sings, and that’s rough, but I think a lot of it is also what he sings. The lyrics are very poetic, very visceral, and very… apocalyptic? in a way that is very not typical for a pop song. I’ve been reading the lyrics alongside a bunch of the songs this relisten, and I’m pretty sold. For one, you can totally totally hear what he’s saying if you have the words in front of you, it’s just sometimes you end up with moments of “Oh, he actually says that? It was so unexpected, I just assumed I’d misheard”. The lyricism is kinda extra, but it’s also authentic and powerful. It makes me want to write. It makes me want to read. It makes me want to think. It makes me want to listen.
As a more general review of things, the first three albums are great. They feel representative of the sound I associate with Everything Everything at this point, even though there’s more Everything Everything after the third album than before it. That’s probably not fair, that probably pigeonholes the band too much, but I think it’s kinda true, that’s the part of them that’s iconic of them. The last two albums, Raw Data Feel and Mountainhead, are also pretty good but with a different feeling, and I think probably not as good. The middle albums, A Fever Dream and RE-ANIMATOR, I did not enjoy as much. But yeah, all around I really like them, they’ve kept growing on me, they’ve taken on meaning. I’m going to bump them up to a full A. Not an A+, but still pretty darn good, I’m a fan
tunafruitsandwitch 