Schizophrenic Pop

CREATING more buzz than a swarm of wasps in a treacle factory, Everything Everything are udoubtedly the band of the moment.

Not only have they spent the summer ambling around pretty much every respectable festival, but just weeks after the release of their debut album they are already being tipped as future Mercury Music Prize winners.

Yes, they are that good. And why? Well, they are different. In a scene populated by look-and sound-alikes, this experimental four-piece are not just breaking the indie-rock mould; they have comprehensively smashed it, ground up the pieces, put them in a pipe... and smoked it.

Perhaps it’s their ability to be interesting and challenging, yet at the same time deliciously poppy, and their knack of being witty and clever without being pretentious.

“We’re just a schizophrenic pop band,” says bass player Jeremy Pritchard – who has taken on the role of band spokesman.

“I wouldn’t really describe us as indie or rock,” he goes on, “But I do like things to remain interesting and not to repeat old tricks.”

It’s a charge no one is likely to throw at them. Their album Man Alive, which followed cult singles Suffragette Suffragette, Photoshop Handsome and the sublime MY KZ, UR BF is nothing if not different – bouyed along by three-part harmonies, stabbing post-punk guitars, mind-racing lyrics and frontman Jonathan Higgs’s falsetto flights of fancy.

The fact it went straight into the charts at number 17 speaks volumes. It’s certainly not bad for a first effort. And then there were those killer sets at Reading and Leeds Festivals, and that Holy Grail of music events, Texas’s South By South West – where they ended up being the toast of the town.

Quite literally, if the tails of inebriated merrimaking are anything to go by.

Rather than mainstream indie, Jeremy, Jonathan, Alex Robertshaw (guitar, keyboards, vocals), and Michael Spearman (drums, vocals) prefer the invented label “bizarre and blues”.

Jeremy explains: “We like a lot of R’n’B from the 90s onwards. There’s loads to be learned from the production values. Even though that kind of music is quite shallow in terms of its lyrics, its music is quite thrilling. And that’s something that fascinates us.

“We certainly look to America for our inspiration.”

Formed in Manchester, the band have reluctantly been lumped together with that city’s indie-scene by commentators eager to pigeonhole them. But they actually hail from as far afield as the Weald of Kent and the North Pennines.

“Jonathan is from the Northumberland/Cumbria border, and Alex is from Guernsey,” says Jeremy. “That’s about as far apart as you can get in the British Isles!

“There’s a lot of baggage that comes from being a Manchester band too – even though it’s not our home city. Some people want to perpetuate the myth of a Manchester sound. But, actually, the thing we like about the city’s music is that all the bands from there, from the 70s onwards, have been totally different.”

And anyway, their influences all come from the other side of the Atlantic, remember?

“When we were 17 we would have been described as indie fans, but we’ve all felt let down by everything from 1993 onwards. I loved The Strokes, but everything after that was terrible. It has mostly been ‘knuckles to the ground’ dumb-ass rock. After all, it’s not like we want to become U2 or something.”

Perhaps the most striking quality of their music is Jonathan’s falsetto delivery – something he admits to borrowing from Radiohead’s Thom Yorke.

“It doesn’t seem that strange to us any more,” he says. “It’s normal.

“Jonathan always wrote in that register for his voice and that’s how the songs came into existance.

“But what he is learning to do now is to slip into a lower register for a bit and just use the falsetto for emotional effect.

“It’s all about painting in different colours.”

Oxford fans will get a chance to hear some of those ‘colours’ when the lads headline the city’s OX4 Festival, with a gig at the O2 Arena on Saturday, October 9.

Perhaps we’ll also get to join them for a bit of partying.

“Well, we do like to have a good time, but we’re not a particularly hard-partying band,” says Jeremy. “Maybe we do drink a lot, but that’s because we’re British.

“We’re certainly not as mad as most indie bands – or lads like Kasabian... as much as we might like to be!”

* THE boys from Truck are bringing their rock bandwagon back to town for more music and art focussed on the city’s cultural quarter – OX4. Based at 10 venues up and down Cowley Road, OX4 is a celebration of the best East Oxford has to offer. Headlined by Everything Everything, the stellar line-up also features the likes of Willy Mason, Scratch Perverts, Someone Still Loves You Borris Yeltsin, Wootton Squeezebox virtuoso John Spiers of Bellowhead, and local heroes Dead Jerichos, Half Rabbits and Winchell Riots. But get in quickly. Last year’s OX4 sold out ridiculously early. For more on OX4, see next week’s Guide. A limited number of Earlybird tickets for OX4 are available for the special price of £15. See wegottickets.com/f/1915 or go in person to the 02 Ticketshop, Oxfam in Headington, Oxford Guitar Gallery in Summertown, or Rapture Entertainment in Witney.