Reviews

Sometimes I receive something at exactly the right moment. This morning, my bank account was overdrawn, I had a slight hangover due to an intimate evening with friends and vodka, and I was staring down an impending seven hour library shift. All in all, life was a bit bleak around 11am. But then I started going through the releases that had arrived recently…and this 7” gem was the standout.

Sounding like the spunky lovechild of Rainer Maria, American Football and Piebald (some of my absolute favorite bands), Everyone Everywhere is late 90s emo done right. Sometimes bands like this can sound more like an homage to a genre or scene that has dwindled, but EE don’t suffer from such a dilemma; there are just enough meandering guitar hooks, earnest spoke/sung vocals, and honest lyrics to make this band stand on their own. It’s actually a pretty good trick - being able to remind a listener of days past while still bringing something new to the table.

So, I of course have some kind of complaint and it has to do with the first song…why all the damn background noise towards the end?! I mean, I get it; you’re talking about weird people hanging around, so it would seem cool to put strange advertisements and whatever other odd sound bites you could come up with underneath the music, but it’s really distracting and it leaves a bad taste heading into the rest of the EP. I actually stopped the song because I thought something else was playing somewhere…not cool.

But other than this issue (which lasts about a minute), I’m impressed with Everyone Everywhere. These are great tunes that seem simple on the surface, but turn out to be rather intricate when you pay close attention. Brendan McHugh’s vocals might take some getting used to, but they are earnest and relatable, which are the two best things to have in a singer when playing this type of music. A Lot of Weird People Standing Around has got me jonesin’ for more, so a full-length best be on the way soon. Now the only thing left to do is get them out of Philly and down to Delaware so I can catch’em live.