Altsounds - Everything Everything - My Keys, Your Boyfriend [Single]

We’ve all been there - you look forward all week to Saturday’s wife-swapping session at Derek and June’s house in Slough, then a mere hour into the big night you are crying onto your latex briefs as Derek picks out your car keys. So this is what Bjork was singing about when she sang “This wasn’t supposed to happen.” Manchester’s Everything Everything have certainly been there (I don’t remember them, but then there were a lot of people at Derek and June’s that night), and it moved them to song - namely this, their third single in their relatively short life together as a band, ‘My Keys, Your Boyfriend’. And to think the year started off so promisingly for them too; selected as one of my ‘Tips for 2009’ on this very site - who could have foretold it would end in swinging hell?

For every cloud has a silver lining though, and in this case it’s that Everything Everything continue to delight with their music and build on the considerable promise shown late last year with the release of their debut single, ‘Suffragette Suffragette.’ ‘My Keys, Your Boyfriend’ flirts with as many musical influences as June flirts with husbands, which is exactly what made me pick them out as ones to watch late last year. I stopped short of saying I tipped them for big things, as it’s unlikely their key-changing, genre-hopping songs of a thousand time signatures will find favour with the masses, but if eclecticism is your bag then Everything Everything have the goods to fill it.

I’d like to say that B-side ‘NASA Is On Your Side’ is about a space race version of picking teams in the playground, but sadly it’s not. In truth I have no idea what it’s about, but I do know that it’s even better than the A-side, and sounds like Coldplay might sound if:

A) Chris Martin was being kicked repeatedly in the bollocks (form an orderly queue).
B) They weren’t Coldplay
C) They spent more time writing songs than they do writing their shopping list on their hand
D) They weren’t Coldplay
E) They didn’t shop at Next
F) They weren’t Coldplay

So in summary ‘NASA Is On Your Side’ sounds absolutely nothing like Coldplay, and a lot like sheer bloomin’ brilliance – confirming that Everything Everything are so good they named them twice.