Everything Everything Singer Jonathan Higgs Admits Crying at Own Gig - Spinner

Petrus Olsson

Most British bands approach playing London's Shepherd's Bush Empire with a certain sense of trepidation. The stately theatre is one of the English capital's most respected venues -- an allegedly haunted Victorian gem with an enviable roll call of musical highlights. Everyone from theRolling Stonesto theArctic Monkeys, theWhotoOasis,Radioheadto Page and Plant have trod its boards at some point. But forEverything Everything, the show's plain sailing compared to what they embarked on before Christmas.

The Manchester quartet's show at London's Union Chapel saw them join forces with a 16-piece string and brass section to transform their debut album 'Man Alive' into a symphonic event. And if that wasn't enough of a challenge, it was streamed in real-time to iPad and iPhone-clutching fans.

"We could sit here and say, 'Yeah, it was a huge job,'"the band's singer Jonathan Higgs tells Spinner."But the truth is we had a lot of help. And the really hard bit we didn't have to do -- we gave the record to these two guys and they slaved away picking it apart and putting it back together."

The band tried their hand at scoring their own strings-and-brass version of their complex composition earlier in the year for a charity gig in aid of mental health charity Mencap; but this was only five of the album's 12 songs."We thought, 'We've got the whole album here, this is going to take us about two months solid, no sleeping to do this.'"

The band's guitarist Jeremy Pritchard adds,"The rehearsal time was the absolute bare minimum, getting that number of people in a room at the same time was difficult. They're all working musicians or students, so there was a high element of risk, which actually kept everyone on their toes. The soundchecks were rehearsals."

Higgs admits,"I cried."Pritchard too is unafraid to reveal his own emotions."We all welled up at least."

Higgs adds, 'It felt like it was our year, this is the end of it now, and here's what we did during it -- check it out."

Pritchard says,"We wanted the record to be the thing we were celebrating, not us. Hopefully that's how it came across."

The three gigs they play across the UK next week -- Manchester and Birmingham as well as London -- are followed by an appearance at BBC Radio 1's Big Weekend. Whether Higgs and company end up teary-eyed, it's too soon to tell.

Watch Everything Everything Perform 'NASA is on Your Side' at the Union Chapel

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