The Fat Angel Sings

British art-rockers Everything Everything have announced a new album, “Re-Animator”, and shared a new song from it, “Arch Enemy.” Re-Animator is due out August 21st via Infinity Industries/AWAL. It includes the track “In Birdsong,” a new song the band shared via a video in April.

The album was recorded last December at RAK studios in London with producer John Congleton (St. Vincent, Sharon Van Etten, David Byrne). Prior to that there was a year of writing and demoing. A press release points out that for this album the band wanted to focus “on harmonies and melodies over synths and programming.”

In terms of lyrical themes, the album tackles “wonderment at the wider world despite the horror of its politics; existentialism and the prolonged, if fading, youthfulness of being in a touring band; and the ominous threat of climate change. All things which contribute to a sense of one door closing while another awaits.”

Frontman Jonathan Higgs also became interested in the theory of the bicameral mind, as put together by psychologist Julian Jaynes. The press release explains the theory: “It argues that early in human evolution, the two sides of the brain were next to each other but functioned independently. In essence, one side would hear the other sending instructions via a disembodied voice—a zombie-like state of pre-consciousness.”

Higgs further expounds: “This idea of the divided self captivated me. Jaynes attributes this to the origin of gods, people ascribing deity status to this voice they could hear in their head. All this blew my mind, and I started thinking of ways I could make this a central concept. It really touched me. So across the whole record there are millions or references to this theory—to having a split brain, two selves, hearing voices.”

Of the new single, Higgs had this to say: “‘Arch Enemy’ sees a modern-day protagonist searching for a meaningful God. Finding only a congregation of greed, toxicity and waste, in the form of a sentient fatberg in the sewer, he duly prays to it, willing it to purge the decadent world above that has created it. These growing grease mountains are a curious juxtaposition of the modern and the ancient; a brand new example of archaic squalor.”

The band also features Jeremy Pritchard (bass), Michael Spearman (drums), and Alex Robertshaw (guitar).

Their last full-length was 2017’s Mercury Prize-nominated A Fever Dream, although they released the Deeper Sea EP in 2018.