XX: The 1975 - A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships

My goodness that is an underwhelming album cover.
Some of the single art is better, but not by much, tbh.

Ah, The 1975. Bombastic, pretentious, self-aggrandizing? Yes. The band that makes bubblegum pop songs appealing to both emo kids and suburban moms, but combines them with abstract instrumental pieces on their albums to make them seem like era-defining statements? Yes. Do I love them? Yes. I think they're deserving of both the hype they get, the hate they get, and most of the big words they use about themselves. Matt Healy is a captivating frontman with a lot on his mind. I like their fearlessness in combining new and old, different styles that shouldn't work together but often do. And they're a group of buddies from Manchester who play by their own rules rather than those of industry executives, music critics, or internet tastemakers.

But they only have two records under their belt, and their first one sounds pretty immature in my opinion, so if they are to cement their status as a generation-defining band, there's a lot of pressure on for their third album. And they've dropped some (five, actually) advance singles, many of which are super awesome. So I've been really hyped about this album. Which - as mentioned - dropped on Friday. So ladies, gentlemen, and those that lieth betwixt, some ramblings about my pre- and post-release thoughts on A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships.

From the "pastel-dancy" "Sincerity is scary" video (see below).

Let's start with the singles. They're more diverse than you'd think possible even for a group like The 1975. The first one, "Give yourself a try", is a high-paced rocker centered around a relentless three-second riff that repeats for the entire song. Literally. The beat is just a repeating drum machine loop, with the only variation offered by drummer George Daniel's characteristic cymbal mashing. It's minimalist and weird, reminding me almost of Radiohead's "I might be wrong". The song progresses through Healy's fantastic delivery of a string of "older and wiser" style lyrics. They're memorable and entertaining and thought-provoking. Some have called it a return to the emo-rock of their first album. But I disagree, "Give yourself a try" feels fresh and different and is one of my most-played, -sung and -danced-to songs of the year.

The next one was even better. "Love it if we made it" is shockingly good. From the moment its quiet turn-up-the-volume synth intro explodes with Matt shreaking "We're fucking in a car, shooting heroin", the intensity is sky high the whole song through. Healy has often complained about the lack of social and political commentary in pop music, and here he does his utmost to right this wrong. Going after Trump, Kanye, Milo, xenophobia, the refugee crisis, the prison industry, fossil fuels and a bunch of other timely topics in the verses, the song's chorus is like a rallying cry for those who see some glimmer of hope in this mess. Here he spells out some of it. As some other review I read pointed out, whereas "Love it if we made it" might at first sound like a sappy love song, with the "we" referring to a standard relationship, it turns out it's referring to friggin humanity. He's saying "Imagine if we could get through all this, together". It's almost 50 years since John Lennon's "Imagine", and modernity has failed us. This is an absolute gem of a song, and when the second chorus brings back the playful funk that The 1975 played with on I Like It When You Sleep..., I almost feel guilty for enjoying myself as much as I am.

OK, hype hype. The next single was "TOOTIMETOOTIMETOOTIME". It's way to poppy, overly autotuned, I was immediately disappointed. The next was "Sincerity is scary". It's got a lame jazzy intro, it's very short and came across as pretty boring and sappy to me. And then came "It's not living if it's not with you", which does sound more like a The 1975 song, but also is even poppier. So, mixed feelings. Luckily for several of these songs, they received music video treatments, and I think I'd rank how much I like the music videos in the exact opposite order as how much I like the songs. The video for "TOOTIME..." is giddy, charming and heartwarming, and made me appreciate the song ten times more. The pastel dancy video for "Sincerity is scary" makes the song feels much more... sincere. And whereas "Give yourself a try" has a sort of lyric video with an over-the-top but cool aesthetic, the video for "Love it if we made it" kinda just knocks you over the head.

From the "Give yourself a try" video. C.f. "over-the-top but cool aesthetic"

So what about the album? Woof. Well, the first impression was terrible. You see, they've gone for a 22 A Million sound. You know, that amazing Bon Iver record with all the vocoder stuff. Which is a damn shame, since the thing about vocoders is that they warp your voice to just sound like what the vocoder sounds like. So if you use a vocoder in the same way as someone else, even if your voice is completely different, the result is gonna sound exactly the same, and that's what happened here. This isn't a nice "you can hear their influences" type nod, it sounds identical. Like, in a Greta Van Fleet/Led Zeppelin way. It's hella distracting. Boo. The intro just completely put me off. And "How to draw / Petrichor", the first "new" song in the tracklisting after two back-to-back singles, is so derivative that I'm still not over it when the actually pretty awesome second half of the song kicks in.

Luckily, though, the second impression is better. Now I like it quite a lot. It's easily as good as I Like It When You Sleep.... It takes risks, it combines genres that shouldn't be combined and really often makes it work, it's long and bombastic, and the comparisons to "the OK Computer of our generation" (bleagh) are actually understandable. (I don't agree, but I can see where they're coming from. Specifically, they're coming from the Siri-narrated "The man who married a robot / Love theme".) The one place the vocoderisms really work is on the extremely emotional "I like America & America like's me". I think it would make Justin Vernon proud. It's mixed with trap beats, and Healy has described it as an "ode to SoundCloud rap". It's a prime example of the successfully mixing things that shouldn't work, but do. Otherwise there are some very sappy ballads here, and these have only gotten better since I Like It When You Sleep.... "Inside your mind" and the acoustic "Be my mistake" are both lovely. And the low tempos make songs like "Sincerity is scary" and "It's not living if it's not with you" work much better in context. Especially the latter. It's annoying and poppy when played on the radio with other similar-sounding messes, but as track 11 on an actually quite introspective, serious album, it's triumphant and wonderful. The only song I really don't like is the jazz standard (yes really) "Mine". Just... don't. It sounds like the kind of family-friendly Christmas album Britney Spears might release in 4-5 years' time. Luckily, the last two songs bring back the soaring guitars nd sees The 1975 back in band mode. The last song is maybe my favorite of them all.

Conclusion: I don't know how high it would be on my top 10 list, but it would certainly be on there. Give it a try. It's the real deal. If you liked I Like It When You Sleep..., chances are you're gonna like this too. I'm really into it, actually, despite its many flaws. The 1975 sure aren't perfect. They'd be boring if they were.

Best tracks: "Love it if we made it", "I always wanna die (sometimes)", "I like America & America likes me", "Inside your mind"