Following on from the release of their heavily-praised 2017 studio album 'A Fever Dream' and its subsequent follow-up EP 'A Deeper Sea' the next year, Everything Everything have now broken their silence with a brand new single.
The new track 'In Birdsong' is the band's first piece of new material in two years, and sees them explore a more sombre and ethereal angle to their sound.
Speaking about their new offering, frontman Jonathan Higgs said, “‘In Birdsong’ tries to imagine what it would have been like to have been the first self-aware human. The theory claims that the eventual melding of these two minds into the two-sided human brain we have now was the dawn of mankind’s consciousness.
"I had come across a concept by psychology academic Julian Jaynes, the Bicameral Mind Theory: the idea that at one stage humans had two separate minds, one inside each half of our brains, and messages or commands would be delivered by one and received by the other. These ‘voices’ were thought to be those of the divine. The theory claims that the eventual melding of these two minds into the two-sided human brain we have now was the dawn of mankind’s consciousness. I wanted to somehow insert this evolutionary psychology into a song because I felt so in awe of the idea. I found a deep sense of wonder at its core, about life and the world. It applies to songs about love, sex, life, death and humanity - the things I’ve always written about.
"We weren’t intending to share this song right now, but in the age of Coronavirus, we wanted to be responsive to the changed landscape and ‘In Birdsong’ unexpectedly emerged as the most appropriate song to reappear with. Birdsong has accompanied human life since before we were even human, but in the recent century it has been obscured or pushed out of our lives. In the song I talk about hearing birdsong and knowing we are conscious and alive. With fewer cars and planes, and less human intervention generally, we’ve all been given the opportunity to reconnect with resurgent nature, and where we all are, for this brief moment - 'In Birdsong'."
Check out the new video for 'In Birdsong' in the player below.
