Correction: An earlier version of this piece incorrectly referenced “Me” as a track from The 1975’s eponymous first studio album. The track was released on 2013 EPs “Music for Cars” and “IV.”
Contact CU Independent Editorial Manager Ellis Arnold at ellis.arnold@colorado.edu, and follow him on Twitter at ArnoldEllis_.
Indie rock has been trying to sound like the `80s — and the late `70s, for that matter — for the better part of the last 20 years. The Strokes sounded like The Cars. The Killers sounded like The Cars, U2 and then Bruce Springsteen. Interpol harkened back to Joy Division. The Smiths’ 1983 revamping of Motown’s bouncy drumbeat from “You Can’t Hurry Love” and droned-yet-affecting vocals would sit right at home on any alternative radio station from 2002 to today.
This embracing of the `80s seemed only logical after, well, the `90s grunge bubble burst and Nickelback became a thing. And (major-label-equipped) indie rock — at least the new-wave/post-punk/The-Strokes-Will-Save-Rock-and-Roll part of it — had been climbing back up to the good ol’ days for years. The logical extent of this evolution (or relapse, depending on where you stand) was Phoenix’s brilliant breakthrough record “Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix,” an album that was somehow good enough to get away with making a cheeky pun on Mozart’s full name in its title.
And whether Phoenix was the best originator of the sound or just its semi-mainstream breakthrough, 2009 was a good marker of where indie rock became less about blustering power chords and more about seeing how trippy you could get with a keyboard.
Since then (as I don’t have to tell you), indie rock has gotten more unabashedly dancy, and The 1975 has been one of the foremost bands in that trend for the last four years. The `10s decade has been marked by Foster the People making danceable whistle-rock, Grouplove channeling all the joy and longing of `80s pop culture into something that might have sounded new even back then, Walk the Moon reliving your parents’ prom night and Two Door Cinema Club, well, just getting down.
And as the pool of `80s-influenced dancy bands gets more and more crowded, The 1975’s second album doesn’t look elsewhere for sounds — it doubles down. Where other bands try to mold their `80s influences into something modern, The 1975 try to be the `80s — synthetic bass and drums and all — and it works to varying results.
But it’s worth noting that if you’ve been following Matty Healy and Co. for a while, it shouldn’t come as much of a shock. In the days when they went by the name Drive Like I Do, they dropped a song that starts like the `80s never ended, palm-muting and all. “Settle Down,” “She Way Out,” “Pressure,” “Chocolate” and “Girls” — all from their 2013 debut LP — all have a common Prince-esque stop-start-stutter guitar rhythm running through them. That they’re somehow boldly broadening the `80s vibe at a time when it would otherwise seem safe is challenging, but it shouldn’t strike fans as a reason to jump ship.
And most of the time, Healy pulls off his wish: he wanted the first album to sound like a John Hughes movie, and this one pulls it off even more earnestly, with `80s rhythms, synths and textures abounding throughout. Whether that’s a good thing, though, is up for debate — like in Hughes’ movies, the intense embrace of youthful emotion here can give way to some silly or predictable moments, ones that threaten to break the mood of hope and empathy he’s going for.
And that’s important, because The 1975 are not out to fuck around on this LP. The band that’s always maintained a fiercely close relationship with its fans shoots for even more meaning this time around. It started after a manufactured band breakup scare on Twitter last June followed by a letter that took jabs at consumerism, and the David Bowie-tinged first single “Love Me” continued that line of thought, complete with indictments of internet activism, complaints of “declining standards” and the word “Karcrashian.” Few, if any, bands out today are trying this hard to change the state of modern western society. “You’ve got a beautiful face but got nothin’ to say” is a loud statement from a band that was lauding women for having faces straight out of movie scenes three years ago.
So they get an “A” for effort on the ideological front. But the album itself falls a bit short on keeping up that level of substance. With a name like “I Like It When You Sleep, for You Are So Beautiful Yet So Unaware of It,” you’d better come packing. The band doesn’t trade in cynicism and self-deprecation the way Fall Out Boy (the band we’d expect to come up with a title like that) does, and it doesn’t fall completely at the shallow end of the spectrum — the title comes dangerously close to saying “You don’t know you’re beautiful, that’s what makes you beautiful,” like a band The 1975 criticized did, but as Healy proves, there’s more rumination in these lyrics than that.
Third track “UGH!” sounds more earnestly funky than anything else The 1975 have ever done, and although it sounds like a run-of-the-mill love song, it’s actually about Healy’s cocaine addiction, a subtle buildup to the middle of the album where Healy portrays himself as breaking down. “If I Believe You” is a 6/8-time gospel-influenced jam that sounds like D’Angelo (one non-`80s influence on the band), complete with wobbly keyboard stylings and a gospel-style choir effect backing Healy in the chorus. It takes a bit to notice it’s a conversation with God — strange for Healy, an atheist — but once you get past the corniness, there’s some genuine emotion behind Healy’s pleas.
It’s immediately followed by an instrumental called “Please Be Naked,” which comes in with a piano that sounds almost too melodramatic, the way a movie score might. The (mostly) instrumental songs are ultimately what threaten to derail the album, all four together clocking in at 18 minutes long on an album that’s 74 minutes in total. Two of them are back-to-back, and another is 6:26 long on its own. And while they’re chock-full of weird techy sounds in a way that Phoenix could get behind, they drag the momentum down rather than set the mood, the way The 1975’s instrumentals did on the first album.
The full-form songs don’t always save them — “The Ballad of Me and My Brain” comes in with vocal effects like Passion Pit, but quickly devolves into a dense, raspy mess that almost recalls that time when The 1975 were an emo band. You would expect a hard-hitting song with a title like that from the man who wrote a seriously bold and introspective EP track about self-harm, suicide and guilt over neglecting his family members in 2013, but it’s literally a story about how Healy is chasing after his brain as if in some kind of cartoon.
“She’s American” is a throwback to “Settle Down” from the first album, with similar chord progressions and the phrase “big town” replacing “small town” as a verse opener this time. The song deals with an emotionally complex and dangerous party scene the way many of their first album’s songs did, but the chorus seems to center around surface differences with a girl who’s, well, not British.
When The 1975 miss, it’s because these songs sound less urgent than the last album and string of EPs set us up to expect. “Settle Down” conveyed what sounded like real conflict in a desirous relationship. “Sex” howlingly captures exactly how it feels to be strung along by someone who’s got “a boyfriend anyway,” and “Pressure” is sung and written like Healy’s life depends on it.
We don’t get that on this album, although there are undoubtedly a few highlights. “The Sound,” although it resembles what you might hear in an old `80s workout video, comes off with the emotion The 1975 are known for. “This Must Be My Dream” is a perfectly dreamy marriage of Healy’s knack for melody and a real-drum-driven groove, something that’s missing on most of the album. (Also, a saxophone solo.) “Somebody Else” is easily one of the band’s best songs, convincingly painting a picture of a failing relationship and the lingering regret that comes with being unable to pull away, breathy vocals and all.
The final three tracks stay pretty consistent, featuring Healy singing believably about a drug-laden relationship, his mother’s postnatal depression after his birth and the grief he feels toward his grandmother’s death. The heaviness in those topics are what have always lied beneath The 1975’s upbeat writing, and they stick to it in the end.
Several songs feature throwback references to the band’s earlier work, and fans of Healy’s wordy, incisive lyrics won’t be disappointed with lines like “Synthetic apparitions of not being lonely” being dropped at rapid speed. Ultimately, “I Like It When You Sleep” bets on seriousness and comes through, if only on the second or third listen: “Loving Someone” is Healy’s moody anti-establishment sermon aimed at showing the youngest generation that through all the vapidity society throws everyone, we have to remember how important loving is, complete with a spoken-word breakdown. The 1975 aren’t always preaching the truth or baring their souls, but when they do, they’re still among today’s best.
