Everyone Everywhere – Self titled

Everyone Everywhere’s title makes for some pretty big claims.  Everyone and Everywhere?   With a name like such I would expect nothing less than a global harmony that sounds as grand as canyons and calming as a gentle river to spring forth from their strings.  But in actual fact, the four-piece is a low-key indie band based out of Philadelphia – a back-story decidedly less exciting than my mind envisioned.

But what about the music?  Well, their debut full-length is what you might expect from a group of indie loving friends with The Promise Ring and Piebald as reference points.  This is a group happy to let their instruments do the talking and proud to have words like “textured,” “chunky,” and “propulsive” thrown around about them.  I’d also like to add a couple of my own, those being “shimmering” and “fluttery.”  While a fuzzy quality does coat most chords, they could just as easily be mistaken for one of Count Your Lucky Stars’ many head-in-the-clouds artists.  I mean that as a compliment, but with a couple of stipulations.

The biggest being that I can never quite place the quartet on alongside any personal reference points.  A couple that first came to mind were Annabell and Empire! Empire! (I Was A Lonely Etate) (and it goes without saying, former labelmates Look Mexico).  But on a track-by-track basis, Everyone Everywhere never reaches a similar sense of lasting impact, nor does it lingers in memory as Annabell’s tracks tend to.  And for the latter, the band’s richly textured layers seldom take command of the room or demand to be heard as per Empire! Empire!

But all is not lost.  One track I’ve found myself getting into quite energetically is an odd lyrical piece that goes by the title “Music Work Paper Work.”  Here the band opens with an interesting question and observation: “look in the mirror/try to raise just one eyebrow/it’s pretty weird/it makes your head feel like it isn’t your.”  I’m not entirely sure what it means, and that’s why I like it – it gets the brain moving.  They need something similar for their instrumental heavy tracks like “Tiny Planet” or “From The Beginning, To The Tail,” which otherwise seems to linger in their skillfully crafted layers a little too long and come up a few octaves shy of the necessary dynamism (the vocal texturing on “Tiny Boat” deserves a shout out though).

I’ve been quite critical of Everyone Everywhere, but only because the chemistry within suggests that there’s something truly special waiting in the band’s future.  But at the moment that magic just feels a tad beyond reach.  Their self titled effort lands somewhere in the middle of that crowded, twinkly indie scene, already home to some of today’s most skilled musicians.  Here’s to hoping that their next effort builds from their strengths and gives listeners a little more to hold on to.