Get To Heaven could easily have been the point at which Everything Everything found themselves banging on the gates of pop purgatory. For British rock bands, album number three is traditionally when media attention turns elsewhere, inevitably taking a significant chunk of the group's fanbase with it. Such has been the fate of Franz Ferdinand, Bloc Party, Wild Beasts and many others. They woke one morning and were yesterday's hot new thing. Then Everything Everything have never played by the usual rules. The Mancunians' 2010 debut, Man Alive, was an eerie, diffuse mash-up of Anthony and the Johnsons, Beyoncé and New Order – for 2013's Arc, they threw back the curtains and added a dash of Coldplay/Elbow populism, for which they were rewarded with the hit single 'Kemosabe', surely the only airplay smash to delve into the Lone Ranger's relationship with Tonto.
From obscure to populist, Everything Everything thus faced a unique task with their third record – how to unite these disparate elements while crafting a long-player that meaningfully advanced their song-craft. It's a challenge they confront head on with a project by turns dazzlingly avant-garde, frenetically catchy and balls-out bonkers. Ticking all three boxes is single 'Distant Past', wherein singer Jonathan Higgs suggests we'd be better off living hunter-gatherer style like our ancestors, whose days were merrily unbothered by Twitter feuds and drunken Facebook postings. Elsewhere, nervy funk guitars pummel the listener on 'Blast Doors' and 'No Reptiles' sees the quartet shooting for synth-pop nirvana as Higgs straightfacedly barks "baby it's all right to feel like a fat child in a push chair/old enough to run/old enough to fire a gun". We have no idea what he's on about – and therein lies the charm.