''A Fever Dream'' is the fourth studio album by English band
Everything Everything
Everything Everything are an English art rock band from Manchester that formed in late 2007. Noted for their eclectic sound and complex, sociopolitical lyrics, the band have released six albums to date – 2010's '' Man Alive'', 2013's '' Arc'' ...
. Recorded with
producer James Ford of
Simian Mobile Disco
Simian Mobile Disco are an English electronic music duo and production team, formed in 2003 by James Ford and Jas Shaw of the band Simian. Musically, they are known for their analogue production. Ford is also known for his production work.
...
and mixed by
Cenzo Townshend
Vincenzo Capellini Townshend (born 28 October 1963) is an English record producer, mixer, and audio engineer, and has worked with artists and bands including the Rolling Stones, a-ha, Kaiser Chiefs, U2, Snow Patrol, Florence and the Machin ...
, it was released on 18 August 2017 on
RCA Records
RCA Records is an American record label currently owned by Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America. It is one of Sony Music's four flagship labels, alongside RCA's former long-time rival Columbia Records; also A ...
. It peaked at number five on the
UK Albums Chart
The Official Albums Chart is a list of albums ranked by physical and digital sales and (from March 2015) audio streaming in the United Kingdom. It was published for the first time on 22 July 1956 and is compiled every week by the Official Charts C ...
, Everything Everything's joint-highest album charting position. The tracks "Can't Do", "A Fever Dream", "Desire", and "Night of the Long Knives" were released as
singles
Singles are people not in a committed relationship.
Singles may also refer to:
Film and television
* ''Singles'' (miniseries), a 1984 Australian television series
* ''Singles'' (1992 film), written and directed by Cameron Crowe
* ''Singles'' ...
throughout 2017. The album was nominated for the
Mercury Prize
The Mercury Prize, formerly called the Mercury Music Prize, is an annual music prize awarded for the best album released in the United Kingdom by a British or Irish act. It was created by Jon Webster and Robert Chandler in association with the B ...
in 2018, ultimately losing out to
Wolf Alice
Wolf Alice are an English rock band from London, England. Formed in 2010 as an acoustic duo comprising singer Ellie Rowsell and guitarist Joff Oddie, Wolf Alice have also featured bassist Theo Ellis and drummer Joel Amey since 2012.
Wolf Alice ...
's ''
Visions of a Life
''Visions of a Life'' is the second studio album by English alternative rock band Wolf Alice, released on 29 September 2017 through Dirty Hit. The album received acclaim from music critics and appeared on several year-end lists, as well as winning ...
''.
Recording and production
''A Fever Dream'' was envisioned as a "companion piece" to ''
Get to Heaven
''Get to Heaven'' is the third studio album by British band Everything Everything. Recorded primarily in Angelic Studios in Northampton during the latter half of 2014 with producer Stuart Price, it was released on 22 June 2015 on RCA Records. A ...
'' (2015), Everything Everything's previous album. Writing for the album took place while the band toured. Bassist Jeremy Pritchard told Andrew Steel of the ''
Yorkshire Evening Post
The ''Yorkshire Evening Post'' is a daily evening publication (delivered to newsagents every morning) published by Yorkshire Post Newspapers in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England. The paper provides a regional slant on the day's news, and traditio ...
'': "We just wanted to work quicker, stew less, avoid neuroticism.
..If we mixed the
ouring and writing processesup, we didn't get sick of one or the other." By the end of their tour in September 2016, Everything Everything had built up a collection of
demos
Demos may refer to:
Computing
* DEMOS, a Soviet Unix-like operating system
* DEMOS (ISP), the first internet service provider in the USSR
* Demos Commander, an Orthodox File Manager for Unix-like systems
* plural for Demo (computer programming)
...
that they worked to unpack between studios in
Manchester
Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The t ...
and guitarist Alex Robertshaw's flat in London. Robertshaw told music blog ''The 405''
's Ken Grand-Pierre on podcast "Exchange" that the writing process had been more collaborative than in the past. While ''Get to Heaven'' had tracks written mostly-independently by Robertshaw and vocalist
Jonathan Higgs
Jonathan Joseph Higgs (born 23 February 1985) is an English singer, songwriter, filmmaker, director and multi-instrumentalist. He is best known as the frontman of the art rock band Everything Everything, with whom he has released six studio albu ...
, for ''A Fever Dream'' the pair "worked from the ground up."
While the band had worked with
David Kosten
Faultline is the musical alter ego of producer and artist David Kosten.
Working under the name Faultline, Kosten produced the largely instrumental debut ''Closer, Colder'' and the follow up ''Your Love Means Everything'', which featured guest ...
and
Stuart Price
Stuart David Price (born 9 September 1977) is an English electronic musician, DJ, songwriter, and record producer known for his work with artists including Madonna, Dua Lipa, The Killers, New Order, Kylie Minogue, DMA's, Example, Take T ...
on previous albums, they instead hired
James Ford to produce ''A Fever Dream''. Pritchard explained that they had wanted to work with him since hearing his work on
Arctic Monkeys
Arctic Monkeys are an English rock band formed in Sheffield in 2002. The group consists of Alex Turner (lead vocals, guitar, keyboards), Jamie Cook (guitar, keyboards), Nick O'Malley (bass guitar, backing vocals), and Matt Helders (drums, back ...
' 2007 album ''
Favourite Worst Nightmare
''Favourite Worst Nightmare'' is the second studio album by English rock band Arctic Monkeys, released on 23 April 2007 by Domino Recording Company. Recorded in east London's Miloco Studios with producers James Ford and Mike Crossey, the album ...
'', which they considered a "perfect sounding rock record." The majority of recording and production was completed in a month.
Robertshaw has stated that the intention was to make the album feel "cohesive," that the music was "all in the same world." He and the rest of the band were inspired by
Talk Talk
Talk Talk were an English band formed in 1981, led by Mark Hollis (vocals, guitar, piano), Lee Harris (drummer), Lee Harris (drums), and Paul Webb (bass). The group achieved early chart success with the synth-pop singles "Talk Talk (Talk Talk s ...
's albums
''Laughing Stock'' and ''
Spirit of Eden
''Spirit of Eden'' is the fourth studio album by English band Talk Talk, released in 1988 on Parlophone Records. The songs were written by vocalist Mark Hollis and producer Tim Friese-Greene and the album was compiled from a lengthy recording ...
'', which "came from a very experimental place" but which ultimately had a "real sense of place."
Composition
Music
Speaking to music blog GoldenPlec, Pritchard called previous record ''Get to Heaven'' "really brash
..really hard and fast," and explained that they "felt like
hey
Hey or Hey! may refer to:
Music
* Hey (band), a Polish rock band
Albums
* ''Hey'' (Andreas Bourani album) or the title song (see below), 2014
* ''Hey!'' (Julio Iglesias album) or the title song, 1980
* ''Hey!'' (Jullie album) or the title s ...
had licence to have a degree of humanity and tenderness" for ''A Fever Dream.''
Lyrics
Everything Everything sought to approach the lyrics for ''A Fever Dream'' from a more "human angle," relying less on abstract predictions and more on "relationship fallouts" from global events taking place after 2015.
Speaking to ''
NME
''New Musical Express'' (''NME'') is a British music, film, gaming, and culture website and brand. Founded as a newspaper in 1952, with the publication being referred to as a 'rock inkie', the NME would become a magazine that ended up as a f ...
'', lead vocalist and writer Jonathan Higgs explained that his writing sought to investigate both sides of ideological conflicts: "Of course I've got my views and they're the ones you imagine, but it's so much bigger than that
At's a place to explore these things rather than just churn out the same old shit that everybody knows."
Higgs's lyrics comment on politics both at home and in the United States, particularly on
Brexit
Brexit (; a portmanteau of "British exit") was the withdrawal of the United Kingdom (UK) from the European Union (EU) at 23:00 GMT on 31 January 2020 (00:00 1 February 2020 CET).The UK also left the European Atomic Energy Community (EAEC or ...
and on
the election of Donald Trump.
He told Frank Valish of
''Under the Radar'' that he spent vast amounts of time on social news aggregator
Reddit
Reddit (; stylized in all lowercase as reddit) is an American social news aggregation, content rating, and discussion website. Registered users (commonly referred to as "Redditors") submit content to the site such as links, text posts, images ...
: "I was kind of embroiled in the whole culture of it, being online and seeing how many social laws break down in that frontier of internet communication." On some tracks, Higgs says his lyrics are "nailing
he band's
He or HE may refer to:
Language
* He (pronoun), an English pronoun
* He (kana), the romanization of the Japanese kana へ
* He (letter), the fifth letter of many Semitic alphabets
* He (Cyrillic), a letter of the Cyrillic script called ''He'' ...
colo
s to the mast." "Big Game" makes use of childish insults directed at Trump,
while "Ivory Tower" focuses on the "worst extremes of the divides we've seen erupt," and references the 2016
murder of Jo Cox
On 16 June 2016, Jo Cox, a British Labour Party politician and Member of Parliament (MP) for Batley and Spen, died after being shot and stabbed multiple times in Birstall, West Yorkshire. In November 2016, 53-year-old Thomas Alexander Mair ...
.
Higgs describes "Run the Numbers" as "our pro-Brexit song, despite my personal view," its writing inspired by a
Michael Gove
Michael Andrew Gove (; born Graeme Andrew Logan, 26 August 1967) is a British politician serving as Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities and Minister for Intergovernmental Relations since 2021. He has been Member of Parli ...
interview in which he stated that "people in this country have
had enough of experts."
Promotion and release
The album was announced on 14 June 2017, with lead single "Can't Do" being featured on
Annie Mac
Annie Mac (born 18 July 1978), is an Irish DJ, broadcaster and writer. She hosted a variety of shows on BBC Radio 1, including BBC Switch and ''Future Sounds''. She also DJed in various locations, including hosting her AMP (Annie Mac Presents) ...
's
BBC Radio 1
BBC Radio 1 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC. It specialises in modern popular music and current chart hits throughout the day. The station provides alternative genres at night, including electronica, dance, ...
show.
''A Fever Dream''
's title comes from the title track. Pritchard told
HMV
Sunrise Records and Entertainment, trading as HMV (for His Master's Voice), is a British music and entertainment retailer, currently operating exclusively in the United Kingdom.
The first HMV-branded store was opened by the Gramophone Company ...
that they "thought it really encapsulated the hazy vibe of the album, the kind of distorted reality," and acknowledge that during production on previous albums they had spent too much time trying to select a name.
Its cover art consists of distorted nude photographs of dancers, taken by Paul Phung and manipulated by Joe Mortimer.
Critical reception
''A Fever Dream'' has received acclaim from
music critics
Music journalism (or music criticism) is media criticism and reporting about music topics, including popular music, classical music, and traditional music. Journalists began writing about music in the eighteenth century, providing commentary on w ...
. At
Metacritic
Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...
, which assigns a normalised rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album has an
average
In ordinary language, an average is a single number taken as representative of a list of numbers, usually the sum of the numbers divided by how many numbers are in the list (the arithmetic mean). For example, the average of the numbers 2, 3, 4, 7, ...
score of 81 out of 100, which indicates "universal acclaim" based on 18 reviews.
AllMusic
AllMusic (previously known as All Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the databas ...
's Marcy Donelson described the album as "confrontational, warped, emotionally and aurally high-contrast, and full of turmoil, but reliable in its infectiousness."
Rachel Aroesti of ''
The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...
'' wrote that the album is not one to "kick back, relax and bury your head in the sand to – it is as much rock opera as traumatic event – but the band's deep dive into this undercurrent of fear and loathing feels necessary."
In addition to the Mercury Prize nomination, Everything Everything received nominations at the
Ivor Novello Awards
The Ivor Novello Awards, named after the entertainer Ivor Novello, are awards for songwriting and composing. They have been presented annually in London by the Ivors Academy (formerly the BASCA) since 1956, and over 1,000 statuettes have been a ...
in the categories of Best Album and Best Song Musically & Lyrically for "Can't Do".
Track listing
Personnel
Adapted from the ''A Fever Dream'' liner notes.
Everything Everything
* Jonathan Higgs – vocals, guitar, keyboards,
programming
* Jeremy Pritchard – bass guitar, backing vocals, keyboards
* Alex Robertshaw – guitar, backing vocals, programming, keyboards
* Michael Spearman – drums, percussion, keyboards, backing vocals
Artwork
* Paul Phung – photography
* Joe Mortimer –
art direction
Art director is the title for a variety of similar job functions in theater, advertising, marketing, publishing, fashion, film and television, the Internet, and video games.
It is the charge of a sole art director to supervise and unify the visi ...
,
graphic design
Graphic design is a profession, academic discipline and applied art whose activity consists in projecting visual communications intended to transmit specific messages to social groups, with specific objectives. Graphic design is an interdiscipli ...
,
typography
Typography is the art and technique of arranging type to make written language legible, readable and appealing when displayed. The arrangement of type involves selecting typefaces, point sizes, line lengths, line-spacing ( leading), and ...
* Billy Bull – graphic design, typography
Production
*
James Ford –
production
Production may refer to:
Economics and business
* Production (economics)
* Production, the act of manufacturing goods
* Production, in the outline of industrial organization, the act of making products (goods and services)
* Production as a stati ...
* Jimmy Robertson –
engineering
Engineering is the use of scientific method, scientific principles to design and build machines, structures, and other items, including bridges, tunnels, roads, vehicles, and buildings. The discipline of engineering encompasses a broad rang ...
*
Everything Everything
Everything Everything are an English art rock band from Manchester that formed in late 2007. Noted for their eclectic sound and complex, sociopolitical lyrics, the band have released six albums to date – 2010's '' Man Alive'', 2013's '' Arc'' ...
–
recording
A record, recording or records may refer to:
An item or collection of data Computing
* Record (computer science), a data structure
** Record, or row (database), a set of fields in a database related to one entity
** Boot sector or boot record, ...
, production, additional engineering
* John Davis –
mastering
*
Cenzo Townshend
Vincenzo Capellini Townshend (born 28 October 1963) is an English record producer, mixer, and audio engineer, and has worked with artists and bands including the Rolling Stones, a-ha, Kaiser Chiefs, U2, Snow Patrol, Florence and the Machin ...
– mixing
* Archie Carter, Luke Gibbs, Ben McClusky, Rob Sellens, Chris Taylor – recording assistants
Charts
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Fever Dream
Everything Everything albums
Albums produced by James Ford (musician)
RCA Records albums
2017 albums