Everything Everything: ‘With this one we felt a new spirit of fun’

Raw Data Feel, the resulting collection of songs, will be out next month, alongside a book, Caps Lock On. Preceding both is a UK tour, which starts tonight in Leeds.

“It was unplanned,” says drummer Michael Spearman of Raw Data Feel. “Every time we make a record we feel like we’ve squeezed all the creative juice out of ourselves, but we felt a bit like, ‘we can’t tour, we should do another album’. Initially it was like, ‘I don’t if we’ve got it in us right now’, but actually what ended up happening was it lifted a lot of the pressure off.

“Because we already knew we’d put out a record we were really happy with it was kind of a way to keep going with the writing we had and be a bit more free with it, and we hit a really good run of writing, and Alex (Robertshaw), our guitar player, produced the record and he had all sorts of new musical toys that under normal circumstances we might not have followed our musical curiosity with as much. But with this one we felt a new spirit of fun and enjoyment.”

To keep things focused, the band set themselves a deadline “We thought it would be good to have new music out for the (April 2022) tour...to give it new life and freshness,” says Spearman. “In a way it was really good having that tight deadline because it made a lot of the decision-making easy. We thought we can’t wait for the right producer to come along and the right studio, let’s just do it ourselves, which we’d been meaning to do for a while but this was the perfect excuse.”

Keeping things “simple and in-house” has resulted in arguably their best album to date. “We really enjoyed it,” says Spearman. “We didn’t overthink it and I think it’s a really fun record.”

The album has a technological theme, however here frontman and lyricist Jonathon Higgs explores some of its positive sides. “It’s interesting with Jon because he’s sort of using technology as a vehicle to talk about other things,” says Spearman. “With Re-animator at the time we were talking about it as a fresh start but I think really this is the fresh start, that was kind of the beginning of it. Really the shift has been Jon’s own world view, his personal circumstances have changed and he feels a bit brighter about the world and on this album he’s more willing to put his emotions front and centre.”

Working with Mark Hanslip, a musician and researcher at the University of York’s Contemporary Music Research Centre, Higgs used artificial intelligence software to create lyrics, song titles and artwork. Spearman says in the beginning the singer kept his process secret from the rest of the band, corresponding privately with Hanslip. “He sort of said (to us) ‘I’m interested to see what could happen’,” the drummer says. “He felt he’d thrown everything at (the previous album) and this was a different way of unlocking that (creativity).

“In the end it’s not like there’s reams and reams of AI lyrics on the album, it’s more like five per cent, but it’s taking inspiration from words and phrases and running with that, like a Bowie method of cut-up, all those cards he used to do to find some spark of inspiration. Once we started getting into that process we said ‘Maybe that could apply to the artwork and the videos as well’ and Jon just taught himself these things.

“It’s a bit like Alex. We have these talented people in the band, let’s use it, and it’s very personal. Rather than getting in expensive video directors, we can do that. It’s very DIY, which we’ve always been, but I suppose we’ve shone a light on that more this time, due to the pandemic as well.”

As for the book, initially Caps Lock On was intended to be “lyrics with a few pictures”, but once the band got into it Spearman started rummaging through his own archives. They also found “hard drives full of digital stuff, photos and demos” which helped them produce a fuller picture of the band’s history. “It’s sort of a lyric book but it’s got a whole kind of world in there, a real range of silly pictures and behind the scenes conceptual stuff, the artwork and the videos, everything we’ve done, really.”

Everything Everything play at O2 Academy Leeds on Friday April 1. Raw Data Feel is out on May 20; Caps Lock On is published by Faber the same day. everything-everything.co.uk