Yeah, I know, I’m already going to see Everything Everything do a proper gig in April, but who am I to turn down another opportunity for effectively free, given I was going to buy the record anyway. It’s an “outstore” at Marble Factory, which I’ve googled and is the exact same capacity as the venue they’re playing on tour, which makes for a fascinating definition of “intimate performance”.
I was slightly on the fence about actually attending, with another option on the table (the wonderful Lachlan Werner at OPPO - I booked him for god’s sake), and knowing that I was not going to know most of the songs. It’s a pre-release show, with the album out in a few days time. In the end, though, I commit to the bit.
In the event, I needn’t have worried. From the opening bars of The Mad Stone, the new songs are instantly effective and engaging. There are obvious songs where I’m mentally making a note of where in setlist we are in order to cross-reference to the album later (Canary and Dagger’s Edge being the two key ones). On the whole, I’m already more interested than I was in their previous effort, Raw Data Feel, and that’s a good sign indeed. One song is dedicate to the slug Jonathan Higgs notices on stage, which feels apt somehow.
After ending the run of new songs with Cold Reactor, the lead single and the only one I’d heard from the album, they move onto a few older ones. We get the obvious ones, like Distant Past and No Reptiles; the weirdly popular one (Pizza Boy); and a very happy surprise of Violent Sun.
During Violent Sun and No Reptiles, I become surprisingly emotional. There’s other stuff, of course, there always is, but god the feeling of being in a room with that music surrounding you is, yes. Yes please. More of that please.