Shortlisted for 2011 Mercury Prize

Man Alive received high critical praise from some reviewers, though others were critical. NME dubbed the band as “pop’s new Picassos” and commented “there are three dirty words in indie right now: ambition, intellect and effort. Everything Everything don’t just fit those terms, they pole-vault over them.” BBC Music hailed the band’s “brilliance” and noted “this Manchester quartet flee from any identikit indie clique, throwing ever-changing, protean sonic shapes… EE are wilfully eccentric, and endlessly entertaining, but they know more than most how to craft a song, how to make an album. They know how to give it depth, light and dark, and they – crucially – know when to stop.” Drowned in Sound praised the band’s “sheer, rampant confidence” and described the album as containing “some pretty spiffy stuff…this is a band going places – they know it, and we know it.” Writing in Pitchfork , Ian Cohen commented that the album was “proof that enthusiastic experimentation can’t save your end product when the underlying elements are so incompatible and unappetizing” and criticized Higgs’s “irritating voice”. On 19 July 2011 Man Alive was shortlisted for the 2011 Mercury Prize , although it lost out to PJ Harvey ‘s Let England Shake .