Everything Everything have spoken to NME about their powerful new album ‘Poison Pop’ and opened up about being inspired by their earlier records to reject the “enshitification” of the world around them.
The British art-rockers eighth album is the follow-up to 2024’s intricate ‘Mountainhead’. While its predecessor saw the band hone in on abstract themes and swap out lead guitars for experimentation with synths, their new record sees Everything Everything revisit their full-throttle, punk-leaning roots, fighting the world’s urge to embrace a world of “slop”.
Born from the members looking back at their earlier days, ‘Poison Pop’ was written as the band hit the road last year to celebrate the 10th anniversary of their third album ‘Get To Heaven’ – a blistering record that predicted the rise of the alt-right.
“We didn’t want to make the same album that we had just made, but also we were busy promoting an album from 10 years ago, which was quite an undertaking,” frontman Jonathan Higgs told NME. “‘Get To Heaven’ is a very aggressive record, and I’m 10 years older now, so it was a case of being like ‘Hey, guys, remember how fucking insane we used to be?’”
“In some sense, that got us in the mood to make another fast record,” he added. “I really wanted to make it a slap-in-the-face type album. ‘Mountainhead’ was all based around a metaphor and a little bit at arm’s length, which was the intention, but this one is much more in your face. You can’t hide from it.”
Throughout the record, the band tackle today’s harrowing societal concerns, from the addictive and insidious nature of social media,to the never-ending stream of rage-bait online, and our seeming acceptance of “AI slop” taking over art.
Check out the title track below, along with the rest of our interview with Higgs, where he also opens up about predicting the future with ‘Get To Heaven’, not feeling threatened by the rise of AI in music, caring more about creating “connection” at their live shows, and whether they will be celebrating 10 years of ‘A Fever Dream’.
NME: Hi Jonathan. Congratulations on the new album. What’s changed for you over the past two years since ‘Mountainhead’?
Jonathan Higgs: “This felt like an unusually long gap for us between albums. We tend to just start again straight away, but this time we made a point of taking our time and ensuring that the songs were right before going any further with them.
“We rejected around 80 or 90 songs while working on this record, then when we got it down to 20 or so, Alex [Robertshaw, guitarist] and I took a step back and asked the other guys ‘What do you think are the best songs here?’ and they chose the final songs. It was a bit unnerving, but we believed in all the ones that we’d presented them with, so it was nice to hand them off and get perspective.”
The album really centres on where we are now in terms of social media dopamine hits, AI, and culture wars. Why was it important for you to lean into that?
“Every time we make a record, every time I write a lyric, someone asks me what it’s about, and I always say it’s about the time we’re in. Sometimes I’ll try and predict the future, but it’s getting harder to do that. Sometimes I just want to reflect what’s around me, and right now uncertainty is the biggest word we have towering over us. The safety nets feel like they’ve been ripped away, and no one knows what’s about to happen.
“I wanted to talk about that, but also I don’t like preaching or listening to people tell me their opinions. What I wanted was to [reflect the] chaos of opinion. There’s a lot of conflicting messaging in the record, and this overarching sense of addiction that runs through it too. ‘Blood Radio’, for example, is about a radio station that makes you go insane with rage if you listen to it, but everyone’s always listening to it. It’s about how fucking amazing it feels to turn on this thing and feel anger. It’s the same with ‘Poison Pop’; it’s about this drink that kills you, but you still want it. That’s how I’m living my life, and how a lot of people are too. But there is a point where you can either succumb to accepting the enshittification of everything around you, or you can try and reject it. The album’s about wrestling with those feelings”.
As someone who has always been very aware of the world around them, how do you see the rising prominence of AI in music?
“My feelings on AI are changing all the time. We were there pretty early on very early on because I’m pretty sure that the ‘Raw Data Feel’ album cover was the first AI-generated one. That, at the time, was very cool, but obviously attitudes have changed since then.
“I think AI is really useful when it comes to art, and can be a really good tool. But I also think that if you’re really genuinely worried that AI can do what you do, then you shouldn’t be doing it. Am I worried that an AI can genuinely do what I do? No. It could probably make a very good impression of what I do, but I don’t think it would be as good. If anything, I actually think art by humans will increase in value because of the amount of slop around us. It’ll be like a vase that’s made in a factory. There’s 20,000 of them made in a day, but put it next to one handmade one, and which one do you think is worth saving in a fire?”
That point about the value also applies to the experience of being at a gig, and how that is something AI can’t replicate. Is that partly why these songs sound like they’re made to be played live?
“Definitely. We care more and more about the live show now when we’re making records. We used to throw it out the window to try and be more creative. We’d say, ‘I don’t care, here’s 20 guitars on this track, we’ll just never play it live’. Now though, we’re much more in tune with how we can do it live with just four people with two hands each. It’s a challenge, and we don’t always make it work, but this is definitely a record for live [because] that’s an area that AI can’t get us yet.”
Some of those themes are similar to what Fontaines D.C. tackled on their new album ‘Dopamine Chamber’. Have you checked it out and seen how they approached it?
“I haven’t! When I’m writing, I try not to listen to contemporaries. I tend to go into myself and what I’ve learned, because I think if you listen to things while you’re writing, you end up copying it.
“It is the conversation of the moment though, isn’t it? We are questioning: ‘What is this stuff doing to us, and how can we get out of it?’ There are two or three huge pressures on our life right now. One of them is AI, one of them is social media, and it’s us not knowing how to control it. It used to be very exciting, but we’re starting to see some of the rot set in now.”
In terms of what you were listening to when you were working on this music, how was it revisiting ‘Get To Heaven’ 10 years on? Did you see it in a new light?
“The songs certainly felt very relevant, especially when we were in America, but also in the UK. A lot of that album was a warning or a scary story about where we could be in 10 years time… and nearly everything bad that could have happened, has happened.
“I wasn’t specific when I made the record, but it was written just on the cusp of the Brexit vote. On the cusp of Trump getting in. On the cusp of the what-we-used-to-call the alt-right revolution. So those songs have definitely resonated over the years and they’ve become more meaningful for people who listen to them. It was nice to get them out, dust them off and say: ‘This is what we were saying 10 years ago and we weren’t wrong, but, quite frankly, I wish we were’.”
Next year marks 10 years of ‘A Fever Dream’. Have you thought about doing anything to mark that milestone?
“Doing this ‘Get to Heaven’ stuff has raised that question now about all of our records and, never say never, but I don’t think we want to get bogged down in looking backwards. It was very unusual for us to do that, so we have no immediate plans, but it’s possible. If everyone hates the new record, we might have to!”
What are you hoping that people take from the new music?
“I hope they get a sense of connection, because connection is all we ever want. It’s a very chaotic era and it’s increasingly difficult to connect, so this might be one place you can do it.”
‘Poison Pop’ is out on March 12. Visit here to pre-order.
