Sept. 11 marks the release of Everything Everything’s fifth studio album, Re-animator. The pandemic hasn’t been particularly kind to this indie rock band; not too soon after it hit the band members found out their studio had caught on fire. Everything Everything is a band known for their hyperactive, dynamic rock style and thought-provoking lyrics, but Re-animator marks a return to the basics. Although, it’s a let-down considering how basic the end product truly is.
Reading along to the album with lyrics reveals just how simplistic Re-animator is as a whole. Nearly every track is a rendition of a four-line verse, the chorus, another four-line verse, a repeat of the chorus, bridge (and/or a third verse if they felt fancy), and finally ending the song with a third repeat of the chorus. If they sprinkled in more creative exceptions to this, listeners wouldn’t become suspicious, but as it is, the pattern is obvious. This also explains why every song hovers at being almost exactly four minutes long.
Re-animator also lacks excitement instrumentally, although this is understandable considering the band suffered losses to its studio and equipment. The album distinctly sounds like Everything Everything, but there’s little experimentation and few melodies that haven’t already been heard in better songs off their other albums. Despite this, it’s worth noting that the entire album is thematically linked and cohesive as a whole. Tracks feature dark lyrics about gods, beasts, and prophecies paired with synth beats, gritty guitar, and Jonathan Higgs’ falsetto vocals.
An interesting aspect of the album is that it was heavily influenced by the psychological theory of the bicameral mind, defined by psychologist Julian Jaynes in 1976. This theory suggests that the human mind, before self-awareness, was split in two. One hemisphere gave commands; the other one listened. This theme is reflected all across the album, but perhaps best in “The Actor” with lyrics like: “The plan was gonna work / So perfectly, because he / Fit in my clothes and has a face like mine / If he acts the same then I don’t mind at all.” The song uses a heavy echo to imitate two voices singing in a hypnotic, trippy way. This is seen again in “In Birdsong” with the words: “A puppet man, a zombie / Lances from the blackness of my eye / I look into the Godmouth / The energy, the energy in us.” Even the album name, Re-animator, could be interpreted as being reborn as something else or possessed like a zombie.
The track, “Arch Enemy,” is a personal favourite off the album; it will simultaneously bring you joy and make you shake your head. This song describes the singer’s enemy as oily, slick, and called Fatberg. Is Fatberg perhaps an uncommon name suggesting a selfish, capitalist Wall Street venturer? Nay, instead it’s a congealed mass of grease and garbage that clogs sewers and is beautifully depicted as a sentient being in the accompanying music video.
As Higgs sings “Sphinx of grease, faceless bloat / Sacrifice in your name / Blubber mount, sewage moon,” the music video shows off gelatinous figures dancing around a CGI creature that can only be Fatberg itself. The sewer beast ominously looks like the character Crazy Frog from the early 2000s. Haunting and hilarious yet effective.
Maybe I’m biased, but Everything Everything’s 2015 album, Get To Heaven, defined my summer upon its release. It gave us the full breadth of the band’s talent: it was focused, instrumentally varied, and chaotically loud. Artists deciding to release lower-production quality albums has been a recurring theme during the pandemic — think The Mountain Goats, Fiona Apple, and now Everything Everything. Make no mistake: it can be done well. In the unfortunate case of Re-animator though, it feels like an album of B-sides that lack the full fantasy that Everything Everything normally delivers.
Chandy is a biology major/chemistry minor who's been a staff writer, Arts editor, and Managing Editor at The Cascade. She began writing in elementary school when she produced Tamagotchi fanfiction to show her peers at school -- she now lives in fear that this may have been her creative peak.
