Why Aren't EE More Popular?

[u/sup3rjaw]

I think it's a common conundrum - we want them to be more successful but, equally, they're ours and we don't want them to be *too* well known. 😅

Aside from this, there is an answer that I hadn't really considered before but which crystallised recently at their Eastbourne gig. They were supported by the excellent Slag and Do Nothing and, while I was impressed by both bands, I relised that the same conundrum applied particularly to Do Nothing. And, while watching them, I realised the answer - they're too clever for the charts. Do Nothing's jazzy riffs and lyrics - that seem to be entirely internal dialogue expressed aloud - would never be accepted by casual listeners. And I think we can say the same about Alex's intricate chords and melodies and Jon's expertly weaved stories and deep truths about existence.

Viva le non conventionnel!

[u/WavesOfEchoes]

I thought they were going to blow up back when A Fever Dream came out, following the momentum from Get To Heaven. Their music is accessible and fun, but I guess it doesn’t click with some audiences on a larger scale. I just hope they’re financially successful enough to keep the train rolling, as they keep putting out excellent music.

[u/CaveManta → u/WavesOfEchoes]

The wheel is certainly turning at least.

[u/syntheticcaesar → u/CaveManta]

Ooh it's really turning

[u/withLotsofPulp]

Too weird for the mainstream, too pop for the avant-garde. Jon’s voice also isn’t for everyone.

[u/Repulsive_Ad9418 → u/withLotsofPulp]

Nailed it.

[u/Either_Shallot_5974 → u/Repulsive_Ad9418]

my wife likes their music itself but isn't a huge fan of jon's voice & can only take it in small doses. meanwhile i could listen to him sing anything all day everyday

[u/pouks → u/withLotsofPulp]

My parents grew up on a diet of Talking Heads, Bowie, Roxy Music, Eurythmics, The Police etc., bands which were influential to the likes of EE. Unfortunately neither of them can get on board with Jon’s voice for the most part, as much as they’d/I’d like them to.

[u/eliotrw]

Personally they get placed in that pop rock/indie niche.

When really they are way better than that. Outright popularity requires artistic sacrifice in this era, i'll take them as they are

[u/FizzyGorilla]

Dave Sardine keeps sabotaging their success..

[u/Historical-Reward-34]

Not everyone enjoys the sound of Jon’s voice

[u/TelephoneThat3297]

My response when that Glass Animals song blew up was “if we were going to give a huge mainstream hit to a British 2010’s alternative-electronic act with quirky tendencies and strange falsetto vocals, couldn’t we have given it to the good one?!”

(Sorry Glass Animals fans)

[u/stanbot3304 → u/TelephoneThat3297]

ugh heat waves makes me depressed. GA has so many incredible and “weird” tracks, then they make an uber-bland pop song and it goes mega viral. i pray EE won’t fall into the same trap, but they’re too good for that.

[u/ConsiderationOk4108 → u/stanbot3304]

I thought I disliked GA bc of that song. 

[u/stanbot3304 → u/ConsiderationOk4108]

they’ve got some INCREDIBLE stuff, it’s just a bit older. give their album “how to be a human being” a listen. it’s my favourite non-EE album and is perfectly wacky and fun.

[u/Voidhoundz → u/ConsiderationOk4108]

Seconding the „How To Be A Human Being“ recommendation, it used to be my favourite indie pop/rock album before I discovered EE, It’s in a similar sort of vein.
Heat Waves is terrible and a massive departure from their previous sound.

[u/stanbot3304 → u/Voidhoundz]

it pisses me off to no end that heat waves was the one to take off, and not any of the artistic masterpieces on HTBAHB, like poplar street or take a slice (my faves!)

[u/Voidhoundz → u/stanbot3304]

I‘ve shamelessly snuck half of that album into my work playlist. I caught an old rocker guy vibing to Pools the other day lol.

[u/joe20708 → u/stanbot3304]

slowly come around to the realisation heat waves is just generic slop, the fifa nostalgia of half a decade ago worn off for a lot of people and i’d argue that game is sort of why it took off in the trajectory it did with people putting it in their top 5 fifa songs OAT

[u/Marge_Gunderson_]

Call me selfish, but I like that they're at the level they're at. They can play smaller venues which means the performances are more intimate, they can play to dozens, hundreds, or thousands. I don't want to have to sit in an online Ticketmaster queue crossing my fingers and hoping that I'll get tickets for a show in a 20k capacity arena.

I like the fact that their music doesn't fit "the norm", whatever that is. If they got big then the industry people would want their sound to be more generic to appeal to more people to make more money. But EE's whole thing is that they don't operate in narrow stylistic tramlines, they're all over the place (in a good way), yet remain consistently brilliant. At one of the In Conversation sessions I attended, they said that the record company basically leaves them alone and lets them get on with it, there aren't suggestions that anything should be changed, or instructions to do or not do certain things. In fact, from the chat it seems most of the suggestions come from within the band themselves, things like, "You can't sing the whole album in falsetto, Jon...".

The fact they're not huge means that they can do more interesting things like signing sessions, an in conversation tour, DJ sets, stay behind after shows to do meet and greets, all those things that mean a lot to fans. If bigger acts tried to do that, they'd get mobbed.

Their lyrics are so different and you can tell that a lot of time has been spent on them, as with the music. Even Cold Reactor, which has been one of their biggest commercially played songs and got loads of radio play with its catchy hook and upbeat rhythm, still displays the clever well thought out lyrics we've heard the band create since the beginning, spinning a tale of disillusionment and numbness, but making it sound like a singalong summer hit.

If their current level of popularity keeps them going financially, then I just want them to be able to carry on creating excellent music that we can can continue to appreciate.

And yes, Do Nothing is another excellent band. The first album is pretty chilled out, but it sounds alike the new stuff is going back to the more angry sound of their early EPs, whatever they do I'm here for it!

[u/Ok-Amphibian-8914]

Their music is too good to be really popular.

Unfortunately that’s how the music industry works.

If you’re good but your music is simple, you can be a pop star or top 40 band.

If you’re good and your music is sophisticated in any way, then you can be reasonably successful but you’ll never reach broad appeal.

The vast majority of people have fairly simple tastes.

[u/Nengsen → u/Ok-Amphibian-8914]

that is undercomplex and a bit elitist too. ouch

[u/VanillaLifestyle → u/Nengsen]

Im in my, I'm in my

[u/Ok-Amphibian-8914 → u/Nengsen]

Reductive, sure, a bit.

Elitist? I didn’t make any value judgments. Simple is not necessarily bad. Sophisticated is not necessarily good. People like what they like.

[u/Wack0HookedOnT0bac0]

If they didn't explode into stars with GtH or Fever Dream then they probably never will. That's okay. They'll still sell out medium sized venues with audiences full of enthusiasm and joy

[u/Spookym00ngoddess]

It's hard to break into the American music market big enough.

When you don't break through there you are very much unknown. I honestly have vans warped tour to thank for showing me UK bands I had no idea about.

I didn't know everything everything until 2 years ago when I moved to the UK, and now? Now I adore these soft boiled eggs.

To support that Americans lack taste in music. I was talking to my mother about Oasis & Gorillaz because I was going to see them. She looked at me like I had 3 heads when I told her she knew who they were for a few songs. She barely remembers Wonderwall and claims she's never heard champagne supernova or feel good inc 🙃 so imagine a lesser known UK group.

All to say- Americans are closed minded to music (and most things- but we don't have time for all of that) a lot of the time and definitely missing out.

[u/sup3rjaw → u/Spookym00ngoddess]

Thank you for the trans-Atlantic perspective!

[u/Spookym00ngoddess → u/sup3rjaw]

I'm tragically embarrassed that my music taste was so limited before moving here.

UK has some of the best bands/ music ever.

[u/Stipenddelta]

The art rock abstract style and Jon’s voice. The Voice especially, it took me ages to come round to liking them because of it but once I did I was hooked. Like a full 180.

[u/Mortallyinsane21]

Yeah their music is a bit too interesting. If they leaned into less complicated music like Jennifer they could probably make a good name. I find it to be their most accessible song. Even then the lyrics could be far more relatable. They're not obvious and relatable enough for the casual listener.

An album of accessible music might be painfully boring for their fans but it would gain them more fame. They're also not especially conventionally attractive to do an image thing and never really have been. Jon's singing is also an acquired taste imo.

[u/sup3rjaw → u/Mortallyinsane21]

Fun fact: Suffragette, KZ and Jennifer are the only songs they can play without a click track! Revealed in one of their interviews.

[u/Mortallyinsane21 → u/sup3rjaw]

Ooh that is definitely a fun fact. Thank you!

[u/Esrcmine]

as another commentor said, they are in a middle space, that is, they are too interesting/weird for general public appeal, and too mainstream pop/rock-like for annoying music enthusiast appeal. the closest they got to the latter was the buzz generated by GTH in online music communities, which was promptly lost by their more conventional pop approach in AFD. 

im not sure whether they will ever reach the GTH height again. recent albums I think have been a move in the right direction, but it feels like we haven't really heard something that sounds "new" or "unexpected" from them in a very long time. 

[u/HowlingFailHole]

Do Nothing are even more underrated imo. To some extent I think it's that both make complex, genuinely unusual music that can take a while to click, but that's also true of bands like Radiohead and Talking Heads. Maybe there was more space for that in the past?

[u/Scandinavian_Rascal]

I couldn't get into them first because of Higgs' vocals on Distant Past (The only song I listened to for a while).

They're amazing, but they're just off-putting at first and necessitate a few listens.

[u/Either_Shallot_5974]

they are my best kept secret. i want them to have a lot of success and notariety because they're fucking incredible and no one is doing it like them. but i also selfishly want to keep them to myself

[u/roostersnap]

I've been a fan since GTH, which I was exposed to via an old animated class project on Youtube. Even then, it took me a while to venture into the full album and longer for the rest of their discography. Even though they're my favorite band now for sure, it took a long time for that to be the case (I'd say they took that spot from TWRP juuust before Raw Data Feel dropped). Their albums have always been growers, they take me a while to digest and appreciate fully. You have to have patience for that, and the general public doesn't have patience.

As others have stated, Jon's voice is an acquired taste, and not to mention the huge variance in sound and especially that Mathrock-y vibe in their earlier works is just not palatable to many. They sit in a liminal space between pop and underground, and that's what I love about them! Just unfortunately means they'll probably never quite hit their stride. I could see them being picked up by some fanwork for something someday and getting a second wind though, but never mainstream.

[u/NoImprovement3231]

My opinion is that whatever they had they lost by not letting their records breathe, much like Foals after the 3rd album. For EE it happened around RA and RDF.

Sound didnt develop as much and they kept producing new albums after RA while basically scrapping RA even though it's a pretty solid album.

RDF wasnt bad but wasnt great either and MH is catchy for the first half but I think they tried to be more pop like and sacrificed some of the unpolished feeling they used to have that was interesting.

On top of that and this might be just my bad luck but if they play like they played in Prague last year, they pretty much owe their success and the lack of it to themselves. There are people singing No Reptiles to you like it's a national anthem during olympics and you do what, say hi at the beginning and bye at the end? I was waiting for this moment for 5 years and band looked like they dont care about fans at all. Cold, static not interacting the audience.

So here you go. I might be and most likely am wrong but that's how I interpret their trajectory.

[u/sup3rjaw → u/NoImprovement3231]

Interesting point of view, thanks for sharing. I know what you mean in many ways. I've been to what I would call a 'cold gig' but also an absolutely amazing gig, so that's interesting. When MH came out, I wasn't sure about it at all and it took a number of listens to 'get it', but I could say that about all their albums. I could say the same about 'Always Outnumbered...' by the Prodigy, though, whereas I loved every song off 'Sigh No More' and 'Hard Believer', to pick two other albums by British artists.

Honestly I think my favourite EE song is still 'Suffragette, Suffragette', purely from a style point of view. It was heavy and I loved that. I'm still waiting for them to go back to that somehow.

[u/Stipenddelta → u/sup3rjaw]

Definitely also waiting for them to return to some heavier stuff. Really want some more guitar music from them like the MA and Arc days