“Bands that take risks, it’s good for them to be recognised” - Everything Everything reflect on their second Hyundai Mercury Prize nomination

Everything Everything have received their second Mercury Prize nomination this morning, for last year’s ‘A Fever Dream’, after their debut record ‘Man Alive’ got the nod in 2011.

“We’ve forgotten how to do it!” drummer Michael Spearman remarks on returning to the Mercury stage after first being nominated for the 2011 prize for their debut album ‘Man Alive’. “It never feels normal, because you don’t really think about it. It’s just a massive surprise.”

“I think we’ve grown up quite a lot in the interim period,” vocalist Jonathan Higgs adds. “I remember the first [nomination] I took really, really seriously, and took not winning it quite badly. This time I’m really happy to be here, and will be cool whatever happens. We’re much more relaxed about this kind of thing. Not that it doesn’t matter, but [not winning] doesn’t mean that you’ve done something wrong! When you’re young, you can get a bit too into that kind of thing.”

“We’ve always tried to be an adventurous band with our music,” guitarist Alex Robertshaw tells us of the band’s place as a distinctly ‘Mercury’ type of group. “We haven’t tried to be unique, but we’ve been very honest with the music we make and being uncompromising, and I think those are the kind of things that good Mercury albums have always had, so I guess in that way, we’re trying to make music like that and it naturally falls into the mould of what they’re doing. Bands that take risks, it’s good for them to be recognised”

The band describe nominated album ‘A Fever Dream’ as “a massive shift from our last album. We made a very strong decision early on about the sort of music that we wanted to make for this record, and how it was going to be cohesive, and less all over the place. It’s amazing to see that that has paid off you know, by being here!”

View the full list of Mercury Prize nominees here.