Album review: Everything Everything’s Mountainhead

In a recent workshop, songwriter Adrianne Lenker of the indie folk group Big Thief postulated that songs emerge from an “ever-mysterious source within us,” and that a songwriter’s primary task is “to ensure this source remains unblocked and unhindered.”

If that’s true, then – to mix metaphors a bit here – Everything Everything’s source is so “unblocked” that to take in their catalog is to drink not from a fire hose but from a geyser. 

The critically-acclaimed group has produced an astonishing seven LPs in the last 14 years, experimenting with variations on their math-rock sensibilities, R&B and electronica rhythms, melodic vocals and densely woven lyrics that blend modern social commentary with ancient myths and fantasy legends. 

Their seventh album, Mountainhead, released this week from BMG, further illustrates their mastery of songwriting and production, in many places taking the road less traveled, like pizzicato violins in place of guitars or choral singing instead backing vocals. 

The result is their best work yet, with just enough dense, intellectual fodder for the superfans, pop hooks and dance riffs for the masses, and grotesque depictions of technology turning humans into bacon for…well, the cynics I suppose, but also as food for thought. (Yep, I went there.) 

The album’s concept describes a caste society in which elites dwell on a mountaintop, while plebes engage in constant digging at its base, working to make the pit surrounding the mountain deeper. The result is a larger and larger mountain: “the taller the mountain, the deeper the hole,” singer and lyricist Jonathan Higgins has said of the concept, an allusion to modern capitalism. 

Higgins’ mind-boggling poetry again mingles the mundane with the metaphysical as we learn about “Mountainheads” and their religion that compels them to keep relentlessly digging into lower depths, no matter how wretched their life.

Opening track “Wild Guess” sets an uneasy tone with detuned synths and a lo-fi, distorted guitar solo by guitarist Alex Robertshaw, recorded backstage while on tour with Foals. It’s a full minute before we hear a vocal – Higgins’ sarcastic “Do you know where I’ve been?” leads eventually to the eerie  “Nothing but endless fields of bodies swimming in the pit.”

Single “Cold Reactor,” which was one of this writer’s top songs of 2023, details the costs of an advanced technological future, where the speaker can only react coldly, with typed messages and emojis: “I sent you a picture of a little yellow face / To tell you that I’m sad about the emptiness that’s all around me.” And it’s tough not to smile at a song that apologizes to the devil in the tongue-in-cheek “Sorry Satan, but I can’t do this evil on my own.”

Tinged with an R&B beat, “R U Happy?” is the most literal track, asking whether technology is worth the isolation it causes. “The Mad Stone” then encapsulates the album’s concept, exploring the cultishmess of religion and castes. It evokes some vaguely Peter Gabriel melodies with overlapping choral mixes and a signature Higgins tongue-twister chorus. 

On “Canary” we get a bit of Björk meets Radiohead with intense production and horrific imagery. “I’ve got these rifles for my arms and legs,” says the speaker, who longs only to “brutalize.” “Enter The Mirror,” “Your Money, My Summer” and “Dagger’s Edge” form a trilogy of funk and hip-hop that borders on pastiche, but in a way that sets up the coming feelings of dread. Higgins calls “Dagger’s Edge” a quintessential Everything Everything track, with a first part reminiscent of Dr. Dre calling out an enemy, then a second half switching to an old desperate man preaching about everyone turning to meat. 

Closing track “The Witness” describes an intense psychological rite of passage, and leaves on a desperate, regretful note: “The bird in the shed, it was looking at you / But you blew off its head cuz that’s what we do.”

The album is everywhere from punk to prog to electronica to hip hop to grunge to art pop to…who knows what else is in here. But this makes sense for a band called Everything Everything. Their work will surely sprout some completely new genres before they’re through with their career — if they haven’t already. 

If Everything Everything were the kind of band that gets number-one albums, this would be their most deserving. We’ll have to rest assured that if bravery and innovation were the metrics, this album would sit atop the mountain. 

Standout track: Cold Reactor

Memorable Lyric: “You deserve a Michelin star / A Michelin star for you” 

Listen for:  Tame Impala vibes on “Enter the Mirror”