Unless you’ve being living under a rock for the last three or four years, you will recognise The 1975 as being the band that, asides from the Arctic Monkeys, have shown British guitar music can go global on a stratospheric level. Their debut album rocketed straight to number one on the week of its release back in September 2013 and the second certainly looks set to do something similar judging by how their ambitious UK tour is selling – five nights in Brixton, four in Manchester and four in Glasgow. Singles from I Like It When You Sleep For You Are Beautiful Yet So Unaware of It that have emerged already include ‘Love Me’, ‘UGH!’, ‘The Sound’, ‘Somebody Else’ and the recently released, ‘A Change of Heart’ that debuted with Annie Mac on Monday, surprise surprise, it was named her hottest record in the world.

So, Manchester’s biggest indie-pop wonders have returned, however if you thought this was going to be an average, carbon copy pop record – you’re sorely wrong. With an album title that perhaps acts as some obscure metaphor to mirror how long the album itself is, it’s a brave, ambitious turn coming in at 17 tracks – 75 bloody minutes. These aren’t short tracks either, the majority are long, contagiously hooky and largely cruise you through an additional scene of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City or Drive; as if you actually were Ryan Gosling smoking cigarettes to the bone whilst flirting with Hollywood’s sleaze. It shakes its hat at the likes of Nile Rodgers, Roxy Music and Squeeze as it effortlessly ties sunset highway drives with cool synth lines and a coming of age sensibility. The 1975 appear to be finishing the story that the likes of Tribes and Swim Deep began for us.

Opening with the swelling of distant synths that would get Daft Punk or Bon Iver all hot under the collar, it feels like the engines are revving and the storybook is opening. In this sense, the prelude to the album works perfectly, you begin to ‘get’ what is about to happen as breezes of The Sunset Strip come into play. It’s the short track at number one in the list that acts as a mission statement before erupting into the back-to-back wall of singles through two, three and four; first up, ‘Love Me’. ‘Love Me’ debuts an effortless funk lead groove that poignantly vibrates below a guitar line that was arguably caressed in the loving arms of Luther Vandross. ‘Love Me’ was the first single of the album pointing at Peace for an addictive chorus. My main gripe with this is the unnecessarily complex melody though. It shimmies and shakes too much throughout the verse, disguising the real groove a little too much and adding little to keep momentum going. Not to worry though, ‘UGH!’ strips the complexity back leaving a retro tinge to the song allowing for Adam Hann, Ross MacDonald, and George Daniel to come to light – regardless of Hann’s obnoxious little guitar interjections thrown in here and there that look embarrassingly over the shoulder of 80s hair metal. Lyrically, front-man Matthew Healy has a jaded go at back handed wit that comes across more as an irritating stroke as he poses little more than pretentious melodrama outlining drug use:

‘Oh the kick won't last for long
But the song only lasts 3 minutes
And I know it's wrong
But give me one’

Drug references in songs are often a bit of a tightrope, unless done tastefully you can’t help but feel there’s some screaming egotism behind it, desperately shouting “but I am a rockstar!”

Four tracks in and we hit the third and arguably best single from the few just handed to us. ‘A Change of Heart’ acts as the adult of the previous two juvenile singles and it expands on the gaps in the groove. Subtle synth melodies undercut Healy’s vocals, bolstering volume and melody to create the happy-go-lucky 80s infused pop. ‘She’s American’ takes us on further twists through big choruses and glittering synth lines, but here you begin to want a twist somewhere in the narrative – long tracks work with diversity but this has essentially been one single maturing track from ‘Love Me’ onwards to ‘She’s American’. ‘I Believe You’ sings towards the ambience of Sigur Ros or Phosphorescent, it’s cool and nicely drifting but being six and half minutes long (!!), you beg the question as to whether this is self-importance at its most disgusting? The ambient tracks such as ‘Please Be Naked’ (4:25) and the title track (6:26) begin to emphasise this notion more, once again, rather than acting as nice, washing interludes, they become over-bearing to the point where your finger hovers over the ‘next track’ button.

‘Lost My Head’ steers the group back on track, it plays on the narrative of the record and takes Kevin Shields ransom with M83 acting as the pistol to his head. It’s everything shoegaze music taught us to do well; wet reverb caresses as vocals lay down on top. It’s nothing new, but it’s done well. ‘Ballad of Me and My Brain’, ‘Somebody Else’, ‘The Sound’ and ‘Loving Someone’ all have one thing in common and that’s their obvious hit single nature. Each is big, bright and bizarrely neon – they all lean on today’s indie-electronic scene, as Animal Collective, Yeasayer and Everything Everything all spring to mind. Larger than life choruses bounce as these are poised to react exceptionally well to large audiences. They are pompous and camp in every notion of the term however, these are unashamed pop songs that will resonate with a global audience.

Unfortunately by the time you hit the final three tracks, you wonder what The 1975 are getting at. ‘Paris’ expands on the 80s pop theme, sounding somewhere between The Police and Bowie but, their job is done by now; they have made, by and large, a great pop album. ‘Paris’ adds little more, it dilutes the hooks and essentially Healy throws the rest of the band in the weeds as they generate nothing but a meek electronic melody to support his vocals. The same theory applies to ‘Nana’ and ‘She Lays Down’ – here, The 1975 make some obscure U-turn on their sound falling prey to acoustic guitars and a move to ambient-folk – but why? What is this needed for? These tracks would make great b-sides but to feature on the album – not so much. They seem to serve for nothing but lethargy and egotism; it generates a sense of introducing album number three two years prior to its release.

Ultimately though, what The 1975 have done is create an album that shows up those that justified hating The 1975 purely upon the fact they were not and are not cool. It puts those people in an awkward position because a lot of this music probably is not all that far from their edgy, hip fodder – 80s electronica, 00s dance music and contemporary indie. The downside to the album is the self-importance and arrogance that appears to be wrapped up in it, it is too long, a large proportion of the tracks are too long and the bleeding album name is too long. However, this is cynical. What it is, is a brave step forward in British popular-culture, to embrace boyband potential has backfired on so many artists allowing for them to become despised by the majority. However, The 1975 are proving their worth here, although veering off course slightly at times within the 75 minutes, this is the boyband album for the hipster. To call The 1975 One Direction but with guitars is a bit of a hyperbolic statement. Yes, they have the prooned, clean-cut package full of tattoos, nail varnish and long wavy hair, however I feel this undermines their story as a band and similarly the musicianship in some of the songs. Overall it can be a frustrating album, but try not to write it off before listening to it, at least give 45 minutes of it a chance.
Tom Churchill

Website: the1975.com
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