Inside the Metro Theatre, the room settles into a low, expectant hum, George Street’s noise dropping away at the door. The space feels compressed, charged, like it’s holding its breath. This isn’t just another tour stop. It’s a full-circle moment for Everything Everything, returning to Australia to mark ten years of Get to Heaven, the record that turned their restless ideas into something sharper, louder, harder to ignore.
Support comes from Hayden Thorpe, stepping out alone but carrying the ghost of his former band Wild Beasts in the room with him. His set leans into restraint. Voice first, everything else orbiting it. There’s a precision to the delivery that draws the crowd inward, the Metro shifting from chatter to close listening in a matter of minutes. The crowd accept the challenge from Thorpe and clap enthusiastically, perhaps even outdoing the crowd in Brisbane!
When Everything Everything arrive there is no slow build, no easing in. The band lock into To The Blade immediately, playing it in full with a clarity that strips away any sense of anniversary nostalgia. The set has songs from other albums interspersed with those from Get to Heaven. The songs still feel urgent. Still wired to the present. The dystopian edge that once felt speculative now reads like documentation.
Jonathan Higgs’ vocal moves between falsetto elasticity and clipped urgency, threading through arrangements that snap and pivot without warning. The band are tight without feeling mechanical, leaning into the album’s sharp turns rather than smoothing them out.
Ten years on, Get to Heaven doesn’t sit as a relic. It moves, it connects, it lands with the same intent that first carried it forward. In a room like this, that’s enough.
Images Deb Pelser
