REVIEW: The 1975 - A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships

A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships

(“A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships” is the third studio album by British band The 1975, released November 30, 2018)

    The 1975 have always been a hit-or-miss band for me. They had some great songs, such as the funk rock track “Love Me,” and some decent songs, like the simple yet fun pop rock track “The City” and the synthpop infused “The Sound.” But the rest was, well, mediocre at best. They had yet to do anything groundbreaking for me. Even “Love Me,” my favorite track by them, was just a simple funk rock track with some electronic tendencies, and it wasn’t even that much of a departure from their normal sound. I also wasn’t a fan of the band’s pretentiousness. Lead vocalist Matty Healy seemed to lack self-awareness, which wasn’t helped by his apparent drug abuse, and their last release was titled “I Like It When You Sleep, for You Are So Beautiful yet So Unaware of It,” which might win the award for “most obnoxious title for an album ever.”

    So because of all of this, it surprised me when I enjoyed all but one of the singles released prior to their new album. The first single, “Give Yourself a Try” is a fun electronic-pop-punk-rock fusion with a riff that sounds eerily similar to Joy Division’s “Disorder.” The second single, “Love It If We Made It,” might honestly be my favorite single of the year. It has Matty’s most powerful performance, singing about modern problems such as the POTUS (the lyrics “I moved on her like a b*tch” and “Thank you Kanye, very cool” are two very real quotes by Donald Trump), racial injustice (“Selling melanin and then suffocate the black men”), religion (“Jesus save us / Modernity has failed us”), and other political issues (“Liberal kitsch / Kneeling on a pitch” - talking about the controversy in the NFL were football players kneel during the anthem). The third single, “TooTimeTooTimeTooTime,” was by far my least favorite. It sounded like a normal contemporary pop track, but with awful Auto-Tuned vocals, although, admittedly, and can be catchy at times. The fourth and fifth single "Sincerity Is Scary” and "It's Not Living (If It's Not with You)" were great tracks, the former being a nice jazz/R&B-fusion pop track with a nice pseudo-swing groove and a beautiful chorus backing the hook, and the latter being a nice homage to classic 80s pop tracks and talks about the Matty’s heroin addiction.

    After all of that, I had very high hopes for this album, and I’m happy to say it didn’t disappoint. Though it has some underwhelming moments, the high points of this album are some of the highest points of any release this year. Despite the name, it covers a variety of topics, albeit mainly focusing on love in some way, such as comparing addiction to love, politics, troubled relationships, the internet, and more. The album is pretty coherent, despite the amount of different musical ideas present, which is a testament to the talent of the band. I also love the sound of this album. Matty Healy and drummer George Daniel did an amazing job with the production. It is a very clean sounding record, and although I prefer a little edge to production, it sounds extremely pretty, and helps each track flow better then they would otherwise.

         From the atmospheric opener simply titled “The 1975,” which shares the same name and lyrics as the opening track to their past two full-length albums, to the seemingly Ed Sheeran inspired “Be My Mistake,” to the jazz-inspired “Mine,” they play around with so many genres and pull them each off so well while still retaining their own sound. The storyline of the track “Man Who Married a Robot / Love Theme” talks about a real issue: missing out on life due to an addiction to social media and electronics in general, and though the robotic narration can get slightly annoying, the instrumental piece at the end makes up for it. This brings me to my one major gripe with this album. The 1975 sometimes use too many vocal effects. Some points on the album sound like the band had just found out you can put effects on vocals, and decided to slap every effect they had onto Matty’s singing. The song "I Like America & America Likes Me" would be so much better if not for the Auto-Tune, which at some points is almost unbearable. The track “How to Draw / Petrichor” also suffers from this, but because it’s about five minutes and only about a minute and a half has these vocals, and it has so many interesting ideas, it doesn't bother me as much.

    This album is fantastic. Many critics are calling it a modern day OK Computer, the groundbreaking 1997 release by experimental rock band Radiohead, and though it may not be as experimental of an album, I can definitely see the comparison in the way that it is such a major departure from the band’s previous sound. Some of the songs on this album even sound like they could have been Radiohead outtakes, such as the instrumental sections of “Surrounded by Heads and Bodies.” Though I am still not a fan of their previous releases, this has definitely gotten me excited for their next project, Notes on a Conditional Form, slated for a May 2019 release. I am going to give A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships a...

8.5/10

Favorite Tracks: Give Yourself a Try, How to Draw / Petrichor, Love It If We Made It, Be My Mistake, Sincerity Is Scary, It's Not Living (If It's Not with You), Surrounded by Heads and Bodies, Mine, I Couldn't Be More in Love, I Always Wanna Die (Sometimes)

Least Favorite(s): TooTimeTooTimeTooTime, I Like America & America Likes Me