Everything Everything frontman Jonathan Higgs admits he and his bandmates locked themselves in a Welsh farmhouse to write their new album, so they wouldn’t be influenced by fans or anyone else listening in.
The band, set to play Glastonbury this weekend, has enjoyed critical acclaim as well as success with their first two albums ‘Man Alive’ and 'Arc', but Jonathan admits the second album was an attempt to make themselves more palatable, while the third album ‘Get To Heaven’ is their return to “what we should be doing”.
He tells HuffPostUK: “This time we weren’t afraid. A lot of the music on the record, it’s the very first time we’d ever played it, we just locked it down. We just felt like being brave.”
Everyything Everything have released their third album 'Get to Heaven' ahead of Glastonbury set
Fans of the band’s biggest songs 'Cough Cough' and 'Kemosabe’ will be relieved to learn that one of their most distinctive aspects is still firmly in place – the frontman’s unwavering falsetto. When did he discover he had this arrow in his musical quiver?
“I was a big fan of Radiohead, Muse and Deftones growing up,” he remembers. “And when you’re sitting in a bedroom, you don’t sing in a big voice in case your parents hear.
“Then when I joined a band, I wasn’t very confident of hitting the notes, so I would switch to the high voice to get there, and it just became more and more natural.
“By the time I got to university, and our band was formed, it just sounded completely normal.”
So, any singles from this new album to talk up at this point? Jonathan immediately points to ‘Spring / Sun / Winter / Dread’, which he calls “pretty immediate”, but he caveats this by calling such things “a Trojan horse”.
“We’re much darker than people realise,” he reveals. “I love the idea of going to a sad, sad party.
“ABBA is a perfect example, and the Smiths did it beautifully as well.
“The music may be happy and you’re dancing and singing along, and then you gradually realise you’re feeling sad, and that’s the most powerful feeling in the world.”
Everything Everything's 'Get To Heaven' is on release now. The band will be performing at Glastonbury Festival this weekend.