Get to Heaven

Recording and production

Initial work on Get to Heaven was done during a busy touring schedule for the band's second album Arc. Following this tour, the band rented studio space in Wales in an effort to be "alone and isolated", but nothing came of these sessions. The album itself was recorded at Angelic Studios in Northampton during 2014. The band hinted at the album's production through their Twitter account in August 2014, and announced they were in the process of recording two weeks later.

The band went into the studio aiming to "make people want to move", and set about avoiding slower-paced songs that had featured strongly on their previous album. This became apparent to them following the writing of eventual album closer "Warm Healer". Higgs told Anthem Magazine that "we kind of ripped up that rule book after realizing, 'Right. Let’s not write something this quiet. Let’s do horrible stuff from now on'". The group worked on ideas for songs as they came to them, rather than their previous method of practising and recording as a live group.

Pritchard told Skiddle that the band were keen to create a record that would "stand up for the huge amount of time you spend touring a record", which in turn inspired a more pop-oriented sound than had appeared on Arc. Higgs later discussed how the band used their previous sound to inform the direction of Get to Heaven, seeking to avoid "quiet songs" and "tenderness" in an effort to "inject a new fire into ourselves".

Though the band's previous albums were produced by David Kosten, they enlisted the support of producer Stuart Price after he impressed them with his work on a demo version of the eventual single, "Regret". As Price is based in Los Angeles, the band emailed him samples of their work for him to critique and receive his suggested mixes in return. The band had mixed reactions to his suggestions. At one point during production of "Hapsburg Lippp" – a track which did not make the final track listing – Price returned them a reggae-inspired mix as a joke. Higgs told Andy Morris of Gigwise that Price had an "ability to become one of us very quickly". Price joined them in person for the last nine days of recording. Alex Robertshaw told Digital Spy that his positivity made an impression on them: "Just [having] another seriously creative person in the room with you is fantastic."

During recording sessions, lead vocalist Jonathan Higgs battled with depression following the end of the band's 150-date tour, calling it "an out-of-the-sauna-and-into-a-cold-bath experience", adding that "riding that low as well as trying to make a record was quite hard". He was affected by frequent mood swings as a result of his medication; bass guitarist Jeremy Pritchard said that these "affected us pretty adversely".

Music

Guitarist Alex Robertshaw told Drowned in Sound's Robert Leedham that the album is "bolder" than the group's previous work, and is "the most Everything Everything record we've ever done". The band aimed for a "euphoric" sound to provide a "contradiction between the way the lyrics are and our sound". In March, the band described their sound as "Baroque Obama" on Facebook, explaining to Gigwise that "it's where Bach meets Jay Z". For certain tracks, Robertshaw said the band's aim was "to sound like changing radio stations", toying with various musical ideas in one song in the same style as Kendrick Lamar. Drummer Michael Spearman compared this style to the humour in The Simpsons: "It's twenty minutes of 'bang, bang, bang' – where it started up was way different to where it ends up. The stories are just fucking crazy. That's fun to us."

Higgs named "Frankie Teardrop" by Suicide as a major influence on the album's sound, describing it as "genuinely scary music": "It's a song: I shouldn't be feeling like this." The band tried to replicate this unsettling, unpredictable sound on the album, but "wanted a happy ending". Speaking to The Independent, Higgs spoke of Radiohead's critically acclaimed Kid A as a further influence, as they "threw out guitars, and with it the very idea of genre". Radiohead's influence on the record was commented on further by Laura Snapes at Pitchfork, who noted the use of a "paranoid guitar solo borrowed from Hail to the Thief". In other sections of the album, the band experimented with other genres; Ludovic Hunter-Tilney of the Financial Times noted the "Talking Heads-style Afro-pop" of title track "Get to Heaven".

Most of the melodies on Get to Heaven originated from Robertshaw's guitar, though he recalled to MusicRadar that Higgs would occasionally approach the band with "an insane laptop creation" which would have to be translated to work as a group. Several tracks feature complex guitar solos, as noted by Rich Chamberlain of MusicRadar. One such solo, featured on the title track "Get to Heaven", was originally recorded in a hotel room. Another, on the single "Spring / Sun / Winter / Dread", makes heavy use of an MWFX Judder pedal. Robertshaw told Chamberlain that "[it] is a bit of a signature for the new record... You can do totally unrealistic things with it and it makes you sound like Steve Vai on crack."

Lyrics

I felt very, very upset with the way people treated each other last year, when we were writing, and a lot of that came out as anger. It made me feel a lot better to sing about it, and a lot of what was said really needed to be said by someone, even if I didn't. Even if my main message that people get is 'I don't know what's going on but I think you're all dicks... does anyone else feel like this?', that's important as no one was saying even that. Everyone was just letting it all go on, only saying 'ooh, isn't it terrible?', but not engaging or trying to understand why these things were happening, or not even having an opinion about our role in all of it. I just felt like I needed to say something, even if that is on a poppy-indie type record. Perhaps that's not the best way to do it, but I have that platform, so it's the one I used.

The album's themes revolve around the current affairs of 2015, such as the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant and the British media's handling of the United Kingdom general election, as well as on the state of humanity. Lead writer Higgs spent a year writing the album, time he spent "watching rolling news" and enveloping himself in current events. Pritchard told the London Evening Standard that "we're in an age where we're more conscious of [upheaval and violence], you've got rolling news and you're constantly bombarded by information". Speaking to Chris Parkin of Red Bull, Higgs explained the songwriting process provided a kind of catharsis following the year's events: "It wasn't until after we finished that I looked back and thought, bloody hell, I was feeling that very heavily and I didn't realise until it was out of me."

The album's opening track, "To the Blade", focuses on the death of Manchester-born aid worker Alan Henning at the hands of ISIL's "Jihadi John". Higgs told Digital Spy that: "He was a taxi driver from Stockport, I could have met him. And the fact that someone who did it was also from Britain, but this was being played out on a global scale... It seemed like the craziest thing I’d ever heard." Other songs criticise political leaders in the United Kingdom. Higgs had been vocal of his distaste of politics in interviews following the release of Arc. Several critics suggest that "The Wheel (Is Turning Now)" is a commentary on the "snake-oil appeal" of then-UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage; Higgs told The Line of Best Fit that the song also comments on "religious leaders and charismatic, corrupt leaders, or even men as gods". "No Reptiles" supposes that political leaders are "just fat, bald, old men, like soft-boiled eggs, that are just weak-willed, with no strong feelings (good or ill)".

Much of the album is presented in-character through the eyes of various fictional entities and onlookers. "Fortune 500" documents a fictional attempt to assassinate Queen Elizabeth II, which Higgs relates to the thoughts of suicide bombers moments before they detonate: "The horror of the doubt is far worse than the act, for the terrorist I mean. It’s this 'oh shit... maybe this isn’t what God wants'. I think it’s the darkest moment on the record." Spearman called the inclusion of loaded, political lyrics on otherwise upbeat songs "the Trojan Horse approach ... get your interesting lyrical idea into something that on the face of it is just there to be enjoyed".

Higgs told the NME that Kanye West's 2013 album Yeezus had a major impact on his writing, encouraging him to present himself more confidently, while Nick Cave provided inspiration to be more impulsive with his writing.

Promotion and release

In November, near the end of the album's production, Everything Everything performed an artist residency at the Manchester Central Library. The album's first single, "Distant Past", was debuted on 17 February 2015 on Zane Lowe's BBC Radio 1 show, with the official music video released later that day through YouTube. The band debuted several new songs from the album at a show at the Oval Space in London on 9 April 2016. The second single from the album, "Regret", was premiered by DJ Annie Mac on 29 April 2015.

The band began marketing the album through a teaser campaign on their social media feeds, featuring lyrics from the album. They announced Get to Heaven's title and initial release date on 14 February 2015. The album art, designed by New Zealand surrealist illustrator Andrew Archer, was not revealed until May. In an interview with Brighton's Finest, Higgs explained the image represents a faith healer "being faith-healed, his face a kind of agony/ecstasy expression", with the bold colour palette representing the album's themes of extremism and information overload. Liner notes, which included large-type excerpts of the album's lyrics on bright gradients, were designed by Johnny Costello of Adult Art Club "to echo high impact religious posters". The album's artwork was included in Creative Review's list of the top ten album covers of 2015.

The album was released on 22 June 2015 in the United Kingdom and worldwide on Sony RCA. Its title, Higgs told Drowned in Sound, was almost "Gimme the Gun", though the band decided not to "put a cherry" on the aggressive lyrical content. Instead, "Get to Heaven" was chosen to represent hope and positivity.

The album was released in the United States on 26 February 2016 through independent record label Big Picnic/RED.

Touring

Everything Everything announced a string of United Kingdom touring dates to promote Get to Heaven, scheduled for 7–21 November 2015, culminating with a show at the O2 Apollo Manchester. They appeared at various European festivals during 2015 including Glastonbury and T in the Park. The American release was promoted with the band's first tour of the United States, playing fifteen dates in support of Welsh indie rock band The Joy Formidable.

Critical reception

Get to Heaven received reasonable critical acclaim upon its release. Aggregating website Metacritic reports a normalised rating of 80 out of 100 based on 16 critical reviews, indicating "generally favourable reviews". Q wrote that the album was "spectacular" in a five-star review, and later named the album as the 20th-best of the year. The Telegraph's Helen Brown commented that "the lads have given this album everything, everything and then some", while Andrew Backhouse of DIY called it "a masterpiece": "this is in a new gear to what their younger selves – or any other band today – could ever dream of."

Much was said about the album's reliance on dark themes. Laura Snapes of Pitchfork wrote that these can be "overwhelming", though she credited the band for "attempting to offer a nuanced understanding of a broken world at a time when a lot of their significantly less imaginative British indie rock peers say worse than nothing".

Critics also commented on the contrast between lyrical themes and underlying music. Digital Spy's Harry Fletcher wrote that there is "something eminently Mancunian" about the clash in styles. Uncut praised the band's "innovative songcraft", but added "their tendency to overthink and squeeze every drop of pleasure from their work does them few favours", while Mojo suggested that the band was "self-consciously dialing everything up to 11 before things go up in flames". The Guardian's Alexis Petridis compared the album's sound to its themes in a three-star review, suggesting that the album "[evokes] the information overload of 24-hour rolling news so well that it essentially provokes the same reaction: it's often compelling, but you occasionally find yourself gripped by an overwhelming urge to turn it off".

The album was among the favourites for the Mercury Prize, with British bookmakers Ladbrokes at one time offering odds of 4/1, but did not make the shortlist. BBC News Online included the album on their list of "ten albums they missed".

Commercial performance

Get to Heaven entered the UK Albums Chart at number seven.

Track listing

Vinyl

Personnel

Adapted from the Get to Heaven liner notes.