Distant Past

"Distant Past" arrives at velocity. Everything Everything's 2015 single opens with a punching, angular guitar figure before collapsing into a chorus so melodically compressed it sounds almost physically uncomfortable — and that discomfort is the entire point. Jonathan Higgs is one of the most technically demanding vocalists in British indie, and here he deploys his falsetto in tight, almost frantic phrases, leaping registers mid-sentence in ways that shouldn't work but communicate urgency better than any conventional delivery could. The song is about the persistence of trauma or memory — the way something supposedly "in the distant past" continues to govern the present, unbidden and humiliating. The rhythm section is precise and relentless, Matt Jukes's bass locked into the drums in a way that gives the track a mechanical forward pressure. Production-wise, it sits in a lineage that includes Radiohead's more brittle moments and the jagged art-rock of early Foals or Battles, but Everything Everything are more interested in pop hooks than any of those reference points. The song rewards repeated listening because Higgs stuffs so much syllabic information into the phrasing that early listens miss half of it. This is music for people who feel too much and think about it too analytically — a song for the over-intellectualized breakdown, the spiraling 3pm in a brightly lit office.