British band Everything Everything releases their U.S. debut EP Cough Cough on Feb. 5th on Strokes singer Julian Casablancas’s label Cult Records/Kemosabe Records. The band also plays The Roxy on March 19th.
The title track has an infectiously urgent feel, with hammering drums, staggered layers of vocals and frantic electronic trills running through it. I was immediately sold. Check out the video:
Based on that track alone, I agree with Pitchfork’s review: “perfectly concise, moving and visceral”. There is also a video for “Kemosabe”, a song which contrasts that angular sound with an unexpectedly melodic chorus. Singer Jonathan Higgs’s falsetto vocals turn suddenly lovely and make the whole song really compelling. The Pitchfork review is actually in regards to their upcoming full-length album Arc, which is already out in the UK and debuted at #5 on the UK Album Chart. The Cough Cough EP features four tracks from it and one track from their first album Man Alive. Arc will be available in the U.S. later this year.
Higgs has this to say about the title track, “‘Cough Cough’ is about the power of money and the desire to get away from it. It’s also about waking up and seeing the world as an unfair place and then slipping back under the spell of greed. It’s about having no money, and wanting more money, and wanting nothing to do with money at all.”
Image via BB Gun Press
