Crud has already exhausted the ‘tumultuous, rain-soaked orchestral pop’ plaudits, so we’ll make this as brief and on target as possible: Manchester’s multi-manned and multi-dimensional Spokes do for the overcast British North West what Arcade Fire did for Quebec and what the Polyphonic Spree and David Koresh did for Texas (no obvious parallels drawn). Not even Brisbane or Queensland have been threatened on this scale, tracks like ‘345’ and ‘Peace Racket’ building from quiet, desultory showers to thrashing, stormy climaxes – the listening equivalent of watching water engulf the floodplains around Scafell, making the likes of British Sea Power seem almost dust-bowl by comparison.
Whilst a definite prog-rock spirit is revived in the warm and swelling title-track, ‘Everyone I Ever Met’ – with its hammering drums and cavernous pizzicato strings, the album pursues a more slow-core, chamber course; ‘Sun It Never Comes’ out-murmuring Chris Martin and ‘Canon Grant’ barely rising above the collapsing hum of a piano and the singer’s woozy – almost extraneous – falsetto. Whilst it’s rain for the most part, the sun’s blinding corona makes the occasional appearance.
‘Everyone I Ever Met’ is an album that moves at its own brave pace; shouting when it wants to, whispering when it wants to and throwing in as few or as many fiddles as custom allows.