Mancunian art pop rockers Everything Everything are back with their third studio album, Get To Heaven, and the latest single, Spring / Sun / Winter / Dread, is infectious in the extreme. With a combination of world beat sounds, electro fusion, left-field pop and the faintest of flecks of alt rock ructions, it’s a song that has few, if any, easy comparisons and when you throw in the brilliant touches of slightly surreal lyrics you’ve got something that’s incredibly unique.
The album was released on the 22nd June 2015 and with a European tour set to kick off in November on the back of a summer of festival gigs, including Reading and Leeds, the new single is only going to add to their growing reputation. It also comes with a fantastical space man inspired music video, which is one of the kookiest of the year. Check it out below to see it for yourself. Let us know what you think in the comments block at the bottom of the page.
The song starts out with a pounding bass drum and cymbal flicks before Afro synth bass notes sweep in to underpin the single. It takes a few bars to get up to full tilt energy, but as soon as the “Spring, Sun, Winter, Dread” chorus ramps in you’re hooked in the addictive rhythm of the track.
The variety of synth riffs is wide ranging, cascading over the timbre of the deep beats and making for a lot of complexity to emmerse yourself in. This is added to by the little fluttering pipe melody that dances on the upper edges of the song and lead singer Jonathan Higgs’ sweeping vocals, which drive the song forward under the influence of his unrelenting orchestral sway.
It all builds to the mental freak out closer, which features a step up of crazy baboon face lyrics and a very cool finger tapping electric guitar riff that Journey would be proud of. It’s the biggest nod to their avant garde art rock credentials, leaving you on an unresolved high that does a lot to inspire a respin of the track.
The lyrics to Spring / Sun / Winter / Dread feel like an African odyssey of Game Of Thrones styling with talk of kings, leopards, barbarians and baboons followed by swinging hammers and exploding skulls. Thieves and murders swirl around each other in the storyline of the song, but it also covers the bitterness felt in the turning of the seasons and the inevitable longing to hold on to your youth. Set within such brutal confines the concept becomes all the more acute.
The new single makes for a very good new song from Everything Everything, showcasing their critically acclaimed third album. We love the video and the spaced out wilds juxtaposition of the lyrical narrative set against the sci-fi visuals that have been created to accompany the song.
Everything Everything, Spring / Sun / Winter / Dread single review: 4.3/5
