Ivor Novello and Mercury Prize nominated Everything Everything announce details of their new album, Poison Pop, launching the record alongside its title track and lead single.
The album’s title track – premiered by Huw Stephens at 6 Music – presents a concoction of tricksy-yet-earwormy guitars wrapped around an addictive bass groove, with a helium-high refrain that effectively apes the dopamine stab of a phone notification. Vocalist/guitarist Jonathan Higgs says, “I didn’t want to make a song just saying using your phone is bad. It’s about the fact that it feels really good, and that’s why it’s a problem. Look what it does to me and to you. It’s designed to addict.”
Poison Pop will be released on March 12, 2027. It provides the next chapter to a career which has included six consecutive Top 10 albums, most recently their previous record, 2024’s Mountainhead. Produced by Alex Robertshaw alongside his regular collaborator Tom A.D., the album is a live-sounding, energetic and physically engaging experience – and one that has the vivacity of a band debuting, but also the expertise of one eight albums deep.
Listen to ‘Poison Pop’ on Geordie Beats.
The Poison Pop album pulsates with a riff-heavy intensity that complements the band’s flair for unorthodox yet instantly engaging art-rock and alt-pop. This was primarily informed by guitarist Alex Robertshaw, who fell back in love with his main instrument while continuing his experimental passion for off-kilter production flourishes and modular synth explorations. Jeremy Pritchard (bass) and Michael Spearman (drums) both concur that this was further heightened by tapping into the immediacy, intensity and strength of conviction of their recent live shows.
Meanwhile, Jonathan Higgs wanted to break from the highfalutin conceptual lyricism of ‘Mountainhead’ and ‘Raw Data Feel’. Instead, a recurring motif emerged: a reflection of the chaos of contemporary society and world events, much of which can be traced back to our collective obsessive compulsion for digital interaction.
Jonathan says, “The album has a strong theme of addiction, particularly that of social media dopamine hits, culture wars and tribalism. The larger question posed is whether you continue to accept the life you are being presented with (‘drinking the slop’; allowing yourself to be brainwashed), or you break the spell and throw off these convictions. There has been a lot of talk about how to deal with those ills, and it feels like we’re coming to a moment of reckoning with it.”
