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A Fever Dream

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A Fever Dream
Composite photograph of a number of mostly-naked people in a circle, hue-shifted orange-red, against a black background. Horizontally across the middle of the image, the band name "Everything Everything" and album title "A Fever Dream" in teal all-caps.
Studio album by
Everything Everything
Released18 August 2017
Recorded2016–2017
Studio
Genre
Length46:30
LabelRCA Victor
Producer
Everything Everything chronology
Get to Heaven
(2015) 		A Fever Dream
(2017) 		Re-Animator
(2020)
Singles from A Fever Dream
  1. "Can't Do"
    Released: 14 June 2017
  2. "A Fever Dream"
    Released: 21 July 2017
  3. "Desire"
    Released: 2 August 2017
  4. "Night of the Long Knives"
    Released: 25 October 2017 [2]

A Fever Dream is the fourth studio album by English band Everything Everything. Recorded with producer James Ford of Simian Mobile Disco and mixed by Cenzo Townshend, it was released on 18 August 2017 on RCA Records.[3][4] It peaked at number five on the UK Albums Chart, Everything Everything's joint-highest album charting position. The tracks "Can't Do", "A Fever Dream", "Desire", and "Night of the Long Knives" were released as singles throughout 2017.[5][6] The album was nominated for the Mercury Prize in 2018, ultimately losing out to Wolf Alice's Visions of a Life.[7][8]

Recording and production

[edit]

A Fever Dream was envisioned as a "companion piece" to Get to Heaven (2015), Everything Everything's previous album. Writing for the album took place while the band toured. Bassist Jeremy Pritchard told Andrew Steel of the Yorkshire Evening Post: "We just wanted to work quicker, stew less, avoid neuroticism. [...] If we mixed the [touring and writing processes] up, we didn't get sick of one or the other."[9] By the end of their tour in September 2016, Everything Everything had built up a collection of demos that they worked to unpack between studios in Manchester and guitarist Alex Robertshaw's flat in London.[10] Robertshaw told music blog The 405's Ken Grand-Pierre on podcast "Exchange" that the writing process had been more collaborative than in the past. While Get to Heaven had tracks written mostly-independently by Robertshaw and vocalist Jonathan Higgs, for A Fever Dream the pair "worked from the ground up."[11]

While the band had worked with David Kosten and Stuart Price on previous albums, they instead hired James Ford to produce A Fever Dream. Pritchard explained that they had wanted to work with him since hearing his work on Arctic Monkeys' 2007 album Favourite Worst Nightmare, which they considered a "perfect sounding rock record." The majority of recording and production was completed in a month.[12]

Robertshaw has stated that the intention was to make the album feel "cohesive," that the music was "all in the same world." He and the rest of the band were inspired by Talk Talk's albums Laughing Stock and Spirit of Eden, which "came from a very experimental place" but which ultimately had a "real sense of place."[11]

Composition

[edit]

Music

[edit]

Speaking to music blog GoldenPlec, Pritchard called previous record Get to Heaven "really brash [...] really hard and fast," and explained that they "felt like [they] had licence to have a degree of humanity and tenderness" for A Fever Dream.[13]

Lyrics

[edit]

Everything Everything sought to approach the lyrics for A Fever Dream from a more "human angle," relying less on abstract predictions and more on "relationship fallouts" from global events taking place after 2015.[12] Speaking to NME, lead vocalist and writer Jonathan Higgs explained that his writing sought to investigate both sides of ideological conflicts: "Of course I've got my views and they're the ones you imagine, but it's so much bigger than that[. A]rt's a place to explore these things rather than just churn out the same old shit that everybody knows."[14]

Higgs's lyrics comment on politics both at home and in the United States, particularly on Brexit and on the election of Donald Trump.[15] He told Frank Valish of Under the Radar that he spent vast amounts of time on social news aggregator Reddit: "I was kind of embroiled in the whole culture of it, being online and seeing how many social laws break down in that frontier of internet communication."[16] On some tracks, Higgs says his lyrics are "nailing [the band's] colo[u]rs to the mast." "Big Game" makes use of childish insults directed at Trump,[15] while "Ivory Tower" focuses on the "worst extremes of the divides we've seen erupt," and references the 2016 murder of Jo Cox.[17] Higgs describes "Run the Numbers" as "our pro-Brexit song, despite my personal view," its writing inspired by a Michael Gove interview in which he stated that "people in this country have had enough of experts."[17][18]

Promotion and release

[edit]

The album was announced on 14 June 2017, with lead single "Can't Do" being featured on Annie Mac's BBC Radio 1 show.[19]

A Fever Dream's title comes from the title track. Pritchard told HMV that they "thought it really encapsulated the hazy vibe of the album, the kind of distorted reality," and acknowledge that during production on previous albums they had spent too much time trying to select a name.[12] Its cover art consists of distorted nude photographs of dancers, taken by Paul Phung and manipulated by Joe Mortimer.

Critical reception

[edit]
Professional ratings
Aggregate scores
SourceRating
AnyDecentMusic?7.7/10[20]
Metacritic81/100[21]
Review scores
SourceRating
AllMusic[22]
Exclaim!9/10[23]
The Guardian[24]
The Irish Times[25]
Mojo[26]
NME[27]
The Observer[28]
Pitchfork7.1/10[29]
Q[30]
Uncut6/10[31]

A Fever Dream has received acclaim from music critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalised rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album has an average score of 81 out of 100, which indicates "universal acclaim" based on 18 reviews.[21]

AllMusic's Marcy Donelson described the album as "confrontational, warped, emotionally and aurally high-contrast, and full of turmoil, but reliable in its infectiousness."[22] Rachel Aroesti of The Guardian wrote that the album is not one to "kick back, relax and bury your head in the sand to – it is as much rock opera as traumatic event – but the band's deep dive into this undercurrent of fear and loathing feels necessary."[24]

In addition to the Mercury Prize nomination, Everything Everything received nominations at the Ivor Novello Awards in the categories of Best Album and Best Song Musically & Lyrically for "Can't Do".[32]

Track listing

[edit]

All songs by Jonathan Higgs, Jeremy Pritchard, Alex Robertshaw, Michael Spearman. Lyrics by Jonathan Higgs.

No.TitleLength
1."Night of the Long Knives"4:38
2."Can't Do"3:32
3."Desire"3:25
4."Big Game"3:48
5."Good Shot, Good Soldier"4:51
6."Run the Numbers"3:39
7."Put Me Together"5:33
8."A Fever Dream"5:59
9."Ivory Tower"3:54
10."New Deep"2:27
11."White Whale"4:50

Sample credits

  • "A Fever Dream" contains an audio sample of "Loquebanteur Variis Linguis" by Thomas Tallis, performed by Oxford Camerata, recorded in the Chapel of Wellington College, 1992. Conducted by Jeremy Summerly, produced by Chris Cracker, engineered by Dave Harris, licensed courtesy of Naxos.

Personnel

[edit]

Adapted from the A Fever Dream liner notes.[33]

Production

Charts

[edit]
Chart (2017) Peak
position
Australian Albums (ARIA)[34] 68
Irish Albums (IRMA)[35] 39
Scottish Albums (OCC)[36] 13
UK Albums (OCC)[37] 5

References

[edit]
  1. ^ "Everything Everything - A Fever Dream". Discogs.com. Archived from the original on 15 December 2020. Retrieved 15 December 2020.
  2. ^ "everything everything release new single 'night of the long knives' - London On The Inside". Londontheinside.com. 18 October 2017. Retrieved 27 August 2018.
  3. ^ "Everything Everything Announce New Album A Fever Dream". Pitchfork. 14 June 2017. Retrieved 25 July 2017.
  4. ^ "Everything Everything announce new album A Fever Dream, share lead single "Can't Do"". The Line of Best Fit. Retrieved 25 July 2017.
  5. ^ "Everything Everything have shared new track 'A Fever Dream'". DIY. 21 July 2017. Retrieved 25 July 2017.
  6. ^ "Everything Everything air new material at secret Glastonbury set". NME. 22 June 2017. Retrieved 25 July 2017.
  7. ^ Snapes, Laura (26 July 2018). "Mercury prize 2018: Noel Gallagher, Florence and Arctic Monkeys shortlisted". The Guardian. Retrieved 28 July 2019.
  8. ^ Snapes, Laura (20 September 2018). "Mercury prize 2018: Wolf Alice win for Visions of a Life". The Guardian. Retrieved 28 July 2019.
  9. ^ Steel, Andrew (24 August 2017). "Music interview – Everything Everything: 'You rarely get to make four LPs on a major label these days, especially bands with our kind of dubious success'". Yorkshire Evening Post. Retrieved 23 December 2017.
  10. ^ Muir, Jamie (18 August 2017). "Everything Everything: Dream on". Dork. Retrieved 28 December 2017.
  11. ^ a b Ken Grand-Pierre (1 November 2017). "Everything Everything (again)". The 405 (Podcast). Archived from the original on 28 December 2017. Retrieved 28 December 2017.
  12. ^ a b c Tom (17 August 2017). "Everything Everything talk us through making new album A Fever Dream..." hmv.com. Retrieved 23 December 2017.
  13. ^ nic Sheoin, Fionnuala (16 August 2017). "Everything Everything - Interview". GoldenPlec. Retrieved 28 December 2017.
  14. ^ Beaumont, Mark (16 November 2017). "Everything Everything talk rejecting technology, Brexit and Trump". NME. Retrieved 23 December 2017.
  15. ^ a b Stevens, Nathan (25 October 2017). "Interview: Everything Everything". Spectrum Culture. Retrieved 23 December 2017.
  16. ^ Valish, Frank (27 November 2017). "Everything Everything on "A Fever Dream"". Under the Radar. Retrieved 23 December 2017.
  17. ^ a b Laurence, Day (24 August 2017). "All you need to know about A Fever Dream, Everything Everything's most personal album yet". The Line of Best Fit. Retrieved 23 December 2017.
  18. ^ Savage, Mark (22 October 2017). "Turning a nightmare into pop music". BBC News. Retrieved 23 December 2017.
  19. ^ Yoo, Noah (14 June 2017). "Everything Everything Announce New Album A Fever Dream". Pitchfork. Retrieved 23 December 2017.
  20. ^ "A Fever Dream by Everything Everything reviews". AnyDecentMusic?. Retrieved 22 August 2017.
  21. ^ a b "Reviews and Tracks for A Fever Dream by Everything Everything". Metacritic. Retrieved 22 August 2017.
  22. ^ a b Donelson, Marcy. "A Fever Dream – Everything Everything". AllMusic. Retrieved 18 August 2017.
  23. ^ Alger, Anna (16 August 2017). "Everything Everything: A Fever Dream". Exclaim!. Retrieved 17 August 2017.
  24. ^ a b Aroesti, Rachel (17 August 2017). "Everything Everything: A Fever Dream review – nerdish pop for a troubled planet". The Guardian. Retrieved 17 August 2017.
  25. ^ Murphy, Lauren (17 August 2017). "Everything Everything: A Fever Dream – sheer musical ambition wins the day". The Irish Times. Retrieved 13 December 2019.
  26. ^ Doyle, Tom (September 2017). "Everything Everything: A Fever Dream". Mojo. No. 286. p. 87.
  27. ^ Bartleet, Larry (16 August 2017). "Everything Everything – 'A Fever Dream' review". NME. Retrieved 13 December 2019.
  28. ^ Mongredien, Phil (20 August 2017). "Everything Everything: A Fever Dream review – infectious and affecting". The Observer. Retrieved 13 December 2019.
  29. ^ Monroe, Jazz (18 August 2017). "Everything Everything: A Fever Dream". Pitchfork. Retrieved 18 August 2017.
  30. ^ Barton, Laura (September 2017). "Total Recall". Q. No. 376. p. 107.
  31. ^ Dalton, Stephen (September 2017). "Everything Everything: A Fever Dream". Uncut. No. 244. p. 26.
  32. ^ Foster, Alistair (24 April 2018). "Ivor Novello Awards nominations 2018: Stormzy takes on Ed Sheeran and Everything Everything in major categories". Evening Standard. Retrieved 28 July 2019.
  33. ^ A Fever Dream (vinyl booklet and case back cover). Everything Everything. London: RCA Records. 2017.{{cite AV media notes}}: CS1 maint: others in cite AV media (notes) (link)
  34. ^ "ARIA Chart Watch #435". AuspOp. 26 August 2017. Archived from the original on 26 August 2017. Retrieved 26 August 2017.
  35. ^ "Irish-charts.com – Discography Everything Everything". Hung Medien. Retrieved 15 September 2020.
  36. ^ "Official Scottish Albums Chart Top 100". Official Charts Company. Retrieved 26 August 2017.
  37. ^ "Official Albums Chart Top 100". Official Charts Company. Retrieved 26 August 2017.
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