For a band who thrives in maximalism, the toned-down Re-Animator is surprisingly well done, even it comes at the expense of some excitement.
Everything Everything’s fifth album Re-Animator has been billed as a “back to basics” release, which sounds deceptively simple. For most bands, this would mean stripping back heavy production or abandoning any gimmicks they have used in an attempt to return to the eagerness and openness of their debut.
Everything Everything are not most bands. They land somewhere between rock music and electronic music, with a strong experimental bent and a truly unique sounding lead singer in Jonathan Higgs. Given that they’ve been remarkably consistent (and consistently weird) since releasing their debut Man Alive a decade ago, it’s hard to imagine what “back to basics” means for Everything Everything.
Re-Animator is the least fussed-over Everything Everything album, and I don’t just mean that because it was recorded in two weeks. As guitarist Alex Robertshaw said, “if you strip back all the songs here you could hammer them out on an acoustic and sing them, and they would work.” In other words, it lacks the bells and whistles of its predecessors, and is relatively straightforward by the band’s standards. For a band who thrives in maximalism, it’s surprisingly well done, even it comes at the expense of some excitement.
When Re-Animator shows its chops, it does so in ways you wouldn’t expect. For instance, the radio-friendly “Violent Sun” is just about the last thing you’d expect from Everything Everything. It’s got steady synthpop instrumentation, an upbeat attitude, and lyrics about seizing the present, but it works to close the album on a stellar note. Conversely, the opening track “Lost Powers” starts with a fairly simple guitar melody, and Higgs’ graceful singing belies its gradual descent into a cacophony of grungy distortion and heavy riffs. It’s much less dramatic than previous openers like “The Night of the Long Knives” or “To The Blade,” and serves as a good introduction to the album’s more conventional songwriting.
The catch of veering towards the normal is that the highs of Re-Animator aren’t the highs you’d expect from Everything Everything. “Lord of the Trapdoor” tries some of the same tricks as “Lost Powers,” to diminishing returns. Despite its occasional swells, “Moonlight” is too muted to leave much of an impression. “Black Hyena” has all of the trappings to be a good synth-rock track, but lacks the spark to really push it off the ground into orbit. I also acknowledge that I might be the hundredth person to point out that “It Was A Monstering” sounds like a Radiohead outtake, but it was one of my first thoughts about the album. I don’t know if it was the tight recording timeline or the way the songs were written, but it occasionally feels like Re-Animator could be more re-animated.
Of course, the band haven’t abandoned all of their usual stylistic flairs. “Big Climb” features Higgs doing the same semi-rapping that made songs like “Distant Past” and “Breadwinner” standouts, but goes for an ominous-sounding chorus rather than the usual explosive one. Regardless, it’s sure to please any longstanding fans. “Arch Enemy” is delightfully weird, with groaning synthesizers over hip-hop drums to create an ode to…a sentient fatberg (a congealed mass of fat that blocks sewers). I can’t think of anyone but Everything Everything who could pull off a track like this. On the slower side, “In Birdsong” grows with tension like A Fever Dream’s title track, with Higgs’ vocals propelling the song until they’re drowned out by electronic effects.
Despite Higgs declaring that he’s “done with” politics after four albums filled with pointed social commentary, it can be found throughout Re-Animator. It’s hard not to see the environmental message behind “Big Climb,” with lines like “are you burning? We can burn it together, first we have to play God.” They also continue the trend of juxtaposing grave topics and frivolities that started with their early hit “MY KZ, UR BF”, as “Planets” opens with the line “to the bigots in the bat cave, I think some of you are permanently off my Christmas list.” There is a deeper theme on several tracks too, that of the “bicameral mind,” or the idea that humans once had a divided mind that made them believe they were hearing godly voices instead of their own consciousness. It’s not exactly the most accessible subject, but it does explain why the “The Actor” isn’t just an unsettling tale of a doppelganger who “fits my clothes and has a face like mine.” Even the sentient fatberg of “Arch Enemy” fits into this motif, with its narrator choosing to worship the greasy personification of human greed as a god. This is a band who have written about internet warriors, foreign conflicts, and radicalization before, so such an enigmatic topic isn’t that out of the ordinary.
There is a certain charm to the unpolished nature of Re-Animator, and the fact that the band accomplishes so much without its usual theatrics says something. It’s inevitably going to be compared to the high bar of Get to Heaven, and admittedly it does lack the pull of their mid-2000s releases. If you are willing to peel things back a bit though, you’ll find several brilliant songs on the album, and will realize that Everything Everything are their same strange selves no matter their attempts at normalcy.
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