One Liner: Incredibly catchy pop rock interspersed with tremendously pretentious and boring songs.
Poster Position: Headliner
Weekend Two Only.
Saturday.
Thoughts: So, these dudes (and mainly their lead singer) have been in the news a lot recently, and not necessarily for their music. It seems that Mr. Healy is into some weird performance art type antics on their recent tour. He also was reportedly dating Taylor Swift, and that purportedly flamed out after a month. But his controversies include having a Malaysian Music Festival cancelled by kissing a male bandmate on stage (which pissed off the other artists who had their shows cancelled so that Healy could have his performative moment against the restrictive LGBTQ+ laws there), a supposed neo-nazi salute?, anti-feminist podcast appearances?, racist stuff towards Asians?, some sort of Ice Spice controversy?, some other racism?, maybe sleeping on stage during a show?, eating a raw steak on stage during a show? I don't know, I quit reading all of these lists, it is too much. He seems like he doesn't care about cancel culture or controversy.
As for the music, I have previously reviewed three of their albums. It's not my thing, overall. Let's just cut and paste those three reviews here for a recap:
"The 1975 - I like it when you sleep, for you are so beautiful yet so unaware of it. 2016. If that album title doesn't make you want to vomit, then the music most definitely will. Spotify calls these guys alt-rock, but that is entirely and unequivocally not true. This is bad 80's electronic pop. Falsettos and synths and sax. Here is the top song right now on Spotify, "The Sound," with 31 million listens [now at 287.4 million, BTW].
It isn't awful, but it is so very derivative of a bunch of music we heard back in the 80's - music that I don't care to go back and listen to again. Sounds like some spare band who had one popular song because it was on the Pretty in Pink soundtrack. Or a Rick Astley b-side. Gag me.
The 1975 - A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships. 2018. I started this review originally ready to bag on these dudes for being as pretentious as that album title. But then I heard "Be My Mistake" and I kinda got thrown back from being a prick. It's quite a nice little acoustical tune. One other track has been getting a lot of radio play (or something, because I've heard it a number of times already) recently, so it seems familiar - "Love It If We Made It," with 33.6 million streams [216 million now]. The horrible "TOOTIMETOOTIMETOOTIME" - an autotuned mess of world musical influences - has more streams at 35.5 million, but it sucks as a song. Here is the former.
Criminy, hold on. A superficial listen to that song would lead me to believe that this a sunny little 80's throwback love song that would be at home on the radio in Grand Theft Auto Vice City. Instead, its a pretty brutal takedown of the ways that modern society has failed and he is saying he would love it if humanity could actually make it. Watch the video. Huh. That one song just made me change my initial approach to the album - I don't like the auto-tuning, and some of this sounds a little schmaltzy, but now I'm sucked in and want to take this thing apart. God help me, I might actually like a 1975 album.
[EDIT] went back to it for a handful more listens, and while there are some good songs on here, overall it is not that great. There are a number of bad to mediocre songs on it that make it hard to enjoy as a cohesive piece.
The 1975 - Notes on a Conditional Form. 2020. These guys juked me. The single I have been listening to for a few weeks is awesomely schlocky 80's sex-party anthem gold. Heavy on the sax. "If You're Too Shy (Let Me Know)" belongs on a John Hughes soundtrack (except for the modern mentions of things like being online) and pretty much jams. BUT, then I fire up the whole album, which is like nine hours of splatter painting through every genre known to man and loads of high-level pretension. I mean, the opening track is a kid talking for like 5 minutes over a plinky little track - its like a child wanted to copy Radiohead and this was the best she could do. I've read online that this is Greta Thunberg throwing down her climate control speech action, so I'm sure I'd get shouted down for calling this stupid, but to open an entire album of pop with this is lame. And then the third song is a cinematic, symphonic instrumental called "The End (Music for Cars)" and I want to barf (even if the song is quite pretty). "The Birthday Party" is like a John Mayer song without the great guitar solo. "Shiny Collarbone" has some world music flavors going on with a cool instrumental beat. "Me & You Together Song" sounds like a sunny brit pop song from the 90's. There is a song on here named "Jesus Christ 2005 God Bless America" - which is quite pretty - but that title, man. Also, and I know I'm whining a lot here, its freaking an hour and twenty minute long. GTFOH - clean that noise up, kids.
I like that song, and I like "If You're Too Shy," and some of the other songs are pleasant, but as a full album, this thing is way too fat and way to pretentious for me to hold around for good."
So, there you have it. Pretentious. Bloated. Every once in a while enjoyable. Like, the second song on their new album is actually really catchy and poppy and enjoyable! It makes me happy! But then there are other songs on there...
The band name came from (wait for the pretension to leap off of the page here) a page of scribblings found in Healy's copy of On The Road by Jack Kerouac that was dated "1 June, The 1975." The members met in high school, first performing together as teenagers. At first, they were called Dirty Hit. Each of their albums has gathered critical praise and gone number one in the UK. They've been nominated for Grammys (but not wins) and were awarded band of the decade at the 2020 NME Awards. So, the critics love them, and obviously they are very popular and able to sell out shows all around the world. They just are a low batting average team for me.
Being that they are weekend two only, I likely won't even need to worry about it. But the show would likely be fun. I like pop. I like rock. I like weirdos doing controversial stuff on stage. What's not to like?
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