For all its rawness and lack of sheen, Everyone Everywhere's self-titled debut full-length carries a disturbingly anthemic candor. In that sense, it's much like the Get Up Kids' Four Minute Mile: a worn, emotional band making its first real strides with punctual, affecting sing-alongs without the glossy veneer that might only render the feelings sterile.

That's a good album to compare with in theory, and a little less musically--TGUK are probably only the sixth band or so one might find Everyone Everywhere's stylistic similarities in. More so, EE take the joyful and playful yet occasionally pensive pop of pre-Wood/Water Promise Ring that invaded their earlier EPs and temper it with a newfound mode of seriousness and tautness, the dynamics of which has and will likely continue to lure old, grizzled Piebald fans. You can hear it in "Raw Bar OBX 2002" when singer Brendan McHugh erupts in Travis Shettel-like yelps of "Heeeey, I've got bigger fish to fryy-yyy!", albeit with a sense of restraint in how he yells it. But his yearning earnestness is all his own, with opener "Tiny Planet" driven over a stomping, mid-tempo path and finding the frontman drawing out a metaphorical relationship-via-brief-travelogue invitation in cordial, deliberate fashion. The biggest chorus the band manage, though, is on "Blown Up Grown Up"; after McHugh ponders more of these place-and-being questions in terms of interpersonal interaction, the track abruptly supplants the rigid verse for chiming guitars and McHugh's upper-register yell of sorts ("Take time, / take an indoor vacation. / Don't do a thing, / not a thing, / doing nothinggg...a while").

That's a contrast that serves as one of the band's best aspects--sounding motivated and urgent while calculated and measured about how they express that. Some might call that a lack of proper energy, but it sounds like the band knows what it's doing. "Tiny Town" builds a slow-burning jangle until its dynamic shift reveals it as the album's most insistent song with a heavy, mid-tempo swagger and McHugh observing the smaller scale of his given surroundings while a guitar tone lightly reminiscent of Texas Is the Reason wavers in the background.

Other melodic indie rock/emo influences are clearly present, though--the soft wah-wahed intro to the aforementioned "Tiny Planet" sounds like it's nabbing an idea from that of the beginning to the Weakerthans' "Civil Twilight," while instrumental "From the Beginning to the Tail" sounds like a Sunny Day Real Estate interlude with thicker distortion and atmosphere. American Football's intricately layered drift is an obvious inspiration too, allowing cuts like "Fld Ovr" and closer "Obama House, Fukui Prefecture" to wrench hearts and stretch out naturally.

Is Everyone Everywhere's own debut full-length an emo classic like the aforementioned Mile? Maybe not an instant classic, and its influence it'll cast down the line, if any, is hard to really quantify. But that's not to dismiss this debut as anything less than a notably accomplished and rewarding effort. and it ensures that whatever follows will certainly be something to write home about.

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Everyone Everywhere