Everything Everything: One Last Trip to Heaven

Making their triumphant return to North America after three years of not headlining here, Everything Everything made its last stop on the Get to Heaven 10th Anniversary tour at Boston's very own Royale. The ensuing night resulted in one of my favorite concerts in a long time. Everything Everything is an art pop band based in Manchester, England. The band consists of lead vocalist, lyric writer and multi-instrumentalist Jonathan Higgs, guitarist and backing vocalist Alex Robertshaw, bassist and backing vocalist Jeremy Pritchard and drummer Michael Spearman. The average listener in North America has likely heard a song or two from its landmark 2015 album, “Get to Heaven.”

Opener Psymon Spine, a Brooklyn-based experimental pop outfit, warmed up the crowd for the main act. The band’s sound is similar to Everything Everything's, a style that’s difficult to replicate. Highlights of their set included “Jumprope” and “Bored of Guitar,” which flowed smoothly from one song to the next. The stage banter was enjoyable as well: they definitely had not lost to Everything Everything while bowling at Brooklyn Bowl during a previous stop in Philadelphia.

When Everything Everything took the stage, the crowd and I were prepared. The band came in swinging with “To the Blade,” the intense opener of “Get to Heaven.” The crowd responded by singing every word of the song back to the band. Of course, being a huge fan, I joined in from the photo pit. Leaving the crowd no time to breathe, the band launched right into “Blast Doors,” a fast-tempo track featuring a vocal delivery from Higgs the crowd still recited every word to. Next up was the album's namesake, a dark song with a bright instrumental about “horror in the everyday,” according to Higgs.

Of course, the show was not just all about Higgs and his stellar performance as frontman. Robertshaw, Pritchard and Spearman put everything they could into their performances, often encouraging the crowd to clap along.

One of my favorite moments of the night was the performance of “Fortune 500.” The original studio recording has horns at the climax of the song, which never fails to give me goosebumps. While no horn section was present on stage, Robertshaw manipulated his guitar to sound like the horns in the recording.

For fan-favorite song “No Reptiles,” the lighting turned as green as a reptile despite the song’s title implying a lack of them. Higgs delivered another blistering vocal performance on the verses, spitting lyrics even faster than he did on “Blast Doors” and bordering on rapping. Yet, the frontman was seemingly able to perform the song just as well as he did in 2015. However, the crowd did help with the slower refrains, as encouraged by Higgs. The build of the song as it climaxes is one of my favorite moments on the entire album, and hearing it live was legendary.

The main set concluded with “Warm Healer,” a song with a great bass groove and less intensity than the rest of the album. Higgs credits this to “the anger from the rest of the album subsiding,” but is still another great track to dance along to. Its two-minute outro allowed the band adequate time to walk offstage and return for its special three-song encore of the night.

The special part of the encore was that the Boston crowd, on the last night of the tour, got to hear three songs — “Cough Cough,” “The End of the Contender” and “Cold Reactor.” The band promised to be back to the hundreds of people who packed Royale, and I look forward to seeing them return, whenever that may be.