Everything Everything – Arc

Sony RCA

8/10

There’s a lot said about the ‘difficult second album’ trap that so many bands fall in to.  It so often marks the difference between bands that never really lived up to their initial hype from the ones that have laid the foundations for a lengthy career.  The Maccabees and Foals are two bands who have found increasing success with their follow up records, successfully balancing on the tightrope between critical credibility and commercial success, and it looks like Everything Everything are set to follow in their footsteps with their new effort, Arc.

Coming two years after their Mercury nominated debut Man Alive, Arc strikes a wonderful balance between the electro pop and catchy guitar hooks that are heard so often on the radio at the moment, and a sophistication that allows them to make it their own while avoiding any pretention.  It’s fairly easy to see why the band led both their album campaign and the record itself with early single ‘Cough Cough’.  It’s an incredibly catchy introduction to the album and shows the band at their best, a song full of incredible pop moments that will no doubt prove popular with festival crowds for the next few years.

Indeed, this single, along with the rest of the record, shows a band ready for increasingly bigger things.  ‘Torso of the Week’ starts out more reflectively, its lyrics taking a dark view of modern life but it builds into a thumping storming chorus, providing yet more evidence that Everything Everything are going to be around for a while.  Arc is a beautifully constructed record, building up and dropping down in way that many would associate with a top-class DJ set, a record designed to be listened to as a whole rather than just a collection of singles and a record that has allowed this band to find their feet and show what they’re really made of.