Matt Wellham
After years of photographing and filming the London music scene, Matt’s now based in Sydney, Australia. A lover of the post-punk and alternative movement, he can usually be found in the grassroots venues, camera in one hand and a beer in the other.
British art-rockers Everything Everything spent the end of 2025 celebrating the 10th anniversary of ‘Get to Heaven’, an album that propelled the band into indie stardom.
Setting dystopian ‘Black Mirror’-style concepts to songs which thrillingly find the sweet spot between experimentation and art-pop, Everything Everything have earned critical acclaim and a devoted following. Their accolades include five Ivor Novello Awards, two Mercury Prize nominations, and a remarkable run of six consecutive Top 10 albums.
I caught up with Jonathan Higgs, the band’s lead singer, ahead of the upcoming Australian leg of their tour this April.
Matt: We’re chatting ahead of your ‘Get To Heaven’s‘ 10th anniversary tour reaching Australia, you’ve already played shows around the UK & EU, how have you found revisiting the album in its full form for a tour?
Jonathan: It’s great. It’s quite hard to sing some of it, because I’m ten years older, but it was hard back then too.
It’s quite an aggressive and high-energy record, so it’s been fun to pull it back out and shake it off.
Saying that, we do play a good few of them pretty much every show anyway, because they’re some of our most well-known songs. So yeah, it’s felt pretty natural, and it certainly feels just as relevant, if not more than it did at the time.
Matt: At the time of release, you’ve spoken about how ‘Get to Heaven‘ was inspired by the horrors of the modern world and global political tensions. How does it feel playing that record with everything that’s happening in the world right now?
Jonathan: ‘Get to Heaven‘ was a warning record, really. It was talking about what might happen if things keep going the way they do. I feel like a lot of the things we were worried about happening have happened, and they’re still happening.
Now it feels a bit like an ‘I told you so’ record, more than a ‘beware’ record. It means we’re still in the same spot that we’ve been since 2015.
Matt: It’s not a great thing to think about, is it? Going back to playing the album in its full form. Are there any tracks from Get to Heaven that you’ve been absolutely stoked to revisit and bring back into the live set?
Jonathan: Yeah, I love playing ‘Warm Healer’ and I really love playing ‘Zero Pharaoh‘. ‘Blast Doors‘ is a fan favourite that we haven’t played for a while, so it’s nice to bring that back in too.
Oh, God. You just reminded me what we’re playing on this tour and I’m immediately shitting myself.
Matt: Well, I don’t think I’ve seen you miss a note in the five times I’ve seen you, so I have every faith in you.
Jonathan: We’ll see. There’s time…
Matt: When ‘Get to Heaven‘ came out, it was like a really strong hit for you and elevated you to a whole other level. How does it feel knowing people around the world still connect to a piece of work you created over 10 years ago?
Jonathan: It’s great because you write something hoping that someone else will feel the same as you, and you never know if they’re going to or not.
The ultimate proof that they have, is not only that they come and tell you how they’re feeling at the time, but ten years later, they’re still connecting to the songs. That’s all you could ever ask for as an artist, really, is to make a connection with someone.
Matt: Have you found the same millennial faces in the crowd, all the way back from 2015? Or have you found that this is connecting with a whole new generation?
Jonathan: We’re now getting the millennials and their kids showing up. There’s also an age group in the mid-teens, which is the age where you go really deep into music and bands stick with you for life. So that’s good to see.
Matt: At the time of this interview, you’ve already sold out the Sydney show. How does it feel to be a band from the Manchester area selling out shows on the other side of the world?
Jonathan: It’s amazing. Australia feels like the furthest country there is. It’s the one we always say if you drill a hole straight down, you come out there.
It’s also one of the most similar places to the UK I’ve ever been, so it doesn’t completely surprise me that there’s a musical crossover. It’s the language, obviously, and the culture is pretty similar.
When you go to China or India and there are people at the front of the barrier singing your songs, that’s really weird because you think, ‘how do they even know you exist, let alone understand you’. That’s pretty special.
Matt: It’s been a couple of years since you last visited Australia. What are some of your favourite things out here and what are you looking forward to this time?
Jonathan: The coffee is really good. Like, it’s surprisingly good. The evening skies too. The number of stars you can see, you just can’t get that in England anywhere.
I love the nature and I love the food and wildlife. Those are my favourite things anywhere, really, but they’re particularly weird in Australia. So they’re really interesting.
Matt: What’s next for you guys after the Australian tour? Are you taking a break, or straight back into the UK/EU summer shows?
Jonathan: We’re almost immediately going into recording mode. So we’ve been demoing and writing for a while and it’s coming close to the end of that process.
I think we come back, have a few days and then it’s rehearsal. I mean, it’s called rehearsal in the calendar, it really just means getting on WhatsApp and going, ‘Ok, which of the songs are actually any good?’.
Matt: Have you had an opportunity to test any of those tracks in front of audiences yet?
Jonathan: Oh no. We always talk about it and we always want to do it, but we’ve done it like three times in fifteen years because we’re just never in that mode.
Getting together and saying, ‘right, we’re going to rehearse all of ‘Get to Heaven,‘ then we’re going to do this completely new song that we don’t know how to play and no one’s ever heard of. I haven’t finished the lyrics, and we’re going to play it in front of three thousand people’.
Yeah. It just doesn’t really work out like that for us; we’re not the Rolling Stones, we’ve actually got to produce it.
Matt: Do you have a timeline for the next project yet?
Jonathan: I’m trying not to put too heavy of a deadline on it. We want to have a little bit of mystery about it.
Matt: Final question, and something I’m sure a lot of vocalists out there want to know. Jonathan, what’s your vocal warm-up routine?
Jonathan: It’s just drinking a lot of water during the day, even if I don’t want to. You’ve just got to be hydrated.
Then it’s really just some lip trills, just good old type stuff. I usually don’t need a warm-up specifically, but it may well be a different story after a 24-hour flight. Let’s see.
Everything Everything will be touring Australia on the following dates and tickets are available here.
