My Favourite Albums of 2020

Albums and songs signpost moments in time. They soundtrack holidays, milestones, journeys, celebrations, occasions both intimate and universal, good and bad. In many obvious ways, 2020 has been very different, but music has continued to backdrop the highs and lows. It’s provided both commentary and escapism, as necessary. It’s safe to say that, due to circumstances, now having both the means and the time, I listened to more new music in 2020 than I have at any other point in my life.

Not everyone likes lists, or understands their appeal, but making them is a habit I’ve formed over many, many years. And, truly, revisiting these albums over the past few weeks, making sense of this year through the music produced, has been a reflective and rewarding process.

Narrowing it down to a list of 50 was quite a challenge; deciding what was number one was not. I loved The 1975’s ‘Notes on a Conditional Form’ from the beginning and it continues to stagger me every time I revisit it (for its range, ambition, timeliness, audacity, musicality etc). You can find a review of that, and indeed most of these albums, elsewhere on this blog. Have a happy new year.

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1. The 1975 ‘Notes on a Conditional Form’
2. Dogleg ‘Melee’
3. Taylor Swift ‘Folklore’ / ‘Evermore’
4. Fiona Apple ‘Fetch the Bolt-cutters’
5. Jeff Rosenstock ‘No Dream’
6. Waxahatchee ‘St. cloud’
7. Soccer Mommy ‘Colour Theory’
8. Run the Jewels ‘RTJ4’
9. Adrianne Lenker ‘Songs / Instrumentals’
10. Fireboy DML ‘Apollo’
11. Westerman ‘Your Hero is Not Dead’
12. Perfume Genius ‘Set my Heart on Fire Immediately’ 
13. Sports Team ‘Deep Down Happy’
14. Bartees Strange ‘Live Forever’
15. Beach Bunney ‘Honeymoon’
16. Christian Lee Hutson ‘Beginners’
17. Haim ‘Women in Music III’
18. Gulch ‘Impenetrable Cerebral Fortress’
19. The Killers ‘Imploding the Mirage’
20. Nation of Language ‘Introduction, Presence’
21. Nathanial Rateliff ‘And it’s Still Alright’
22. Joyce Manor ‘Songs from Northern Torrance’
23. Jason Isbell ‘Reunions’
24. Kelly Lee Owens ‘Inner Song’
25. Hum ‘Inlet’
26. The Microphones ‘The Microphones in 2020’
27. The Strokes ‘The New Abnormal’
28. Ka ‘Descendents of Cain’
29. Fleet Foxes ‘Shore’
30. Dehd ‘Flower of Devotion’
31. The Weeknd ‘After Hours’
32. Bob Dylan ‘Rough and Rowdy Ways’
33. Touché Amore ‘Lament’
34. Sorry ‘925’
35. Phoebe Bridgers ‘Punisher’
36. Tame Impala ‘The Slow Rush’
37. Sufjan Stevens ‘The Ascension’
38. Beabadobee ‘Fake it Flowers’
39. Nana Grizol ‘South Somewhere Else’
40. Jessie Ware ‘What’s Your Pleasure’
41. Young Jesus ‘Welcome to Conceptual Beach’
42. Teenage Halloween ‘Teenage Halloween’
43. I’m Glad It’s You ‘Every Sun, Every Moon’
44. Bruce Springsteen ‘A Letter to You’
45. Boldly James and The Alchemist ‘The Price of Tea in China’
46. Walter Etc ‘Dark Comedy Performance Piece of my Life’
47. Georgia ‘Seeking Thrills’
48. Hinds ‘The Prettiest Curse’
49. Kathleen Edwards ‘Total Freedom’
50. Nap Eyes ‘Snapshot of a Beginner’ 

Other albums I enjoyed and would recommend (presented alphabetically)

Ryan Adams ‘Wednesdays’, Advertisement ‘American Advertisement’, Daniel Blumburg ‘On and On’, Big Loser ‘Love You, Barely Living’, Bombay Bicycle Club ‘Everything Else Has Gone Wrong’, ‘Caribou ‘Suddenly’, Car Seat Headrest ‘Making a Door Less Open’, Cloud Nothings ‘The Black Hole Understands’, Disclosure ‘Energy’, Dua Lipa ‘Future Nostalgia’, Empty Country ‘Empty Country’, Fontaines DC ‘A Hero’s Death’, Four Tet ‘Sixteen Oceans’, Freddie Gibbs ‘Alfredo’, Maya Hawke ‘Blush’, Keaton Henson ‘Monument’, Kill Lincoln ‘Can’t Complain’, Lemon Twigs ‘Songs for the General Public’, LYR ‘Call in the Crash Team’, Paul McCartney ‘McCartney 3’, Bob Nanna ‘Celebration States’, Pinegrove ‘Marigold’, Record Setter ‘I Owe You Nothing’, Rolling Blackouts CF ‘Sideways to New Italy’,  Sinai Vessel ‘Ground Aswim’, Slaughter Beach Dog ‘At the Moonbase’, Spanish Love Songs ‘Brave Faces Everyone’, The Shires ‘Good Days’, Young Culture ‘Young Culture’. 

The 1975 ‘Notes on a Conditional Form’ – Review

31st May 2018 feels like a lifetime ago for a variety of reasons but it was on that day that The 1975 announced their fourth album’s title ‘Notes on a Conditional Form’. July 2019, still a lifetime ago, was when they dropped the lead single and reiterated that the album ‘had to be out’ before they headlined Reading and Leeds festival on August Bank Holiday Weekend. Now, nine months and a further six singles down the line, following two public delays, brexit, and in the midst of a global pandemic, we finally have the album. ‘Notes on a Conditional Form’ is a messy, sprawling, inessant, contradictory, brilliant, unapologetic love letter from The 1975 to the 1975. This is either everything you love, or everything you hate, about the best, and most divisive, band of the past decade.

Sometimes bands give you more when what you really need is less. The 1975 are not one of those bands. I mean obviously they give you ‘more’ (‘Notes on a Conditional Form’ features 22 songs) but the ‘more’ has always kind of been the point. ‘Too much’. Often ‘much to much’. If In the past they’ve been able to cohere their various ideas in to something relatively tight, well that was probably more accidental than anything else. ‘Notes on a Conditional Form’ is sprawling by design. It’s consciously a buffet. Its much too muchness is a reflection of the way we consume modern media. As a consequence, you will find The 1975’s heaviest songs plotted alongside their most delicate. Their most introspective songs alongside their most goofy. Their most experimental songs alongside their most accessible.

There are various musical threads that weave through the fabric of the record. George has developed into a sophisticated producer, and his forays into British bass music yield some of the album’s most inventive moments. From ‘Frail State of Mind’ and ‘I Think There’s Something You Should Know’s anxious, skittering takes on Garage to ‘Shiny Collarbone’s deconstruction of Dancehall and ‘Having No Head’s more obviously indebted homage to Jon Hopkins. A drizzly, late night atmosphere hangs over the album, particularly in these stretches, which compliments Matty’s self conscious introspection.

At the other extreme are a series of gleaming, lovesick guitar songs that ride major chords out of the gloom. ‘You and Me Together Song’ channels late 90s melodic rock to describe both the romance and the realism of being in an adult relationship. ‘We went to winter wonderland and It was shit but we were happy’. It’s one of the least adorned and affected songs they’ve ever produced and it gets you like a lollipop on a hot summer day. ‘Then, Because She Goes’ pulls a similar trick while ‘Roadkill’s sturdier, but no less sugary, take on the genre invokes the highs and lows of life on the road. Here Matty employs a rambling, stream of consciousness style to divulge way more than we needed to know about his ‘tucked up erection’ and the time he ‘pissed myself on a Texan intersection’. It’s not the only song to graphically describe his private bodily functions. The aim, if there is one, seems to be to demystify and deglamorise the rock n roll lifestyle. He is deliberately putting his screw ups and insecurities on show. ‘I never fucked in a car, I was lying’ is how he opens the glorious r&b flecked ‘Nothing Revealed / Everything denied’, skewering the mythic ‘Fucking In a car, shooting heroin’, line from arguably the band’s most iconic song ‘Love it if we Made It’. It’s an overshare, certainly, but reflective of how time and time again Healy positions himself in a candid and unflattering light to lower your defences. The album is ultimately, in part at least, a deconstruction of the rockstar ego. It brushes off any trace of excess or extravagance and hones in on something eminently honest and relatable.

Though the band do bury the lede somewhat. They use the opening two numbers – ‘The 1975’ and ‘People’ – to convey urgent social messages about climate change and political and social disillusionment. But after this the band spend the next eighty minutes looking inward, not outward. ‘Notes on a Conditional Form’ feels like an elaboration on the topics first raised on 2016’s ‘I Like it When You Sleep For You Are So Beautiful Yet So Unaware of It’ (it never gets old writing that). These songs are about feeling too fragile to step outside your house while seeking intimate connections with strangers over the Internet. They’re about falling in love with the wrong person and feeling uncomfortable at parties. About feeling like someone you don’t recognise and, sometimes, not feeling anything at all.

Matty can be pompous and melodramatic. At his worst he gestures at progressive values in a shallow way through a kind of virtue signalling. There’s the careless reference to Pinegrove on ‘The Birthday Party’, for example, and the obscure depiction of a gay Christian’s internal conflict on on ‘JC 2005 God Bless America’ (not to mention opening track ‘The 1975’, which is given over in its entirety to the well meaning but increasingly polarising Greta Thunberg). It’s not that these topics should be out of bounds, rather that he frequently fails to explore them in anything more than a superficial or glib way. But, for his faults, you could never accuse him of lacking integrity. Even in these moments, you can hear him ready to take a pin to his his own ballooning sense of self importance. It’s his sense of humour, as much as his sincerity and self awareness, that ultimately brings him back to Earth.

Better, and more abundant, are the moments of understatement and nuance. ‘Bagsy, Not in the Net’ is, as the title suggests, about a reluctance to do something difficult but necessary for the greater good. Here the lyrics present glimpses of anxiety in action. ‘Try it. Don’t like it. Leaving you here is the thing that I fear so I fight it.’ Similarly, ‘Then Because She Goes’ uses painterly abstractions to convey love’s young blush. ‘You are mine. I’ve been drowning in you. You fracture light again. Beautiful. Please don’t cry. I love you.’ The vocals are processed and flooded below thick guitar strokes which just adds to the sense of sinking. Best of all is ‘Playing on my Mind’ which bridges the gap to the stream of consciousness style of ‘Roadkill’ and ‘The Birthday Party’ with poetic restraint and concision. ‘I won’t buy clothes online cause I get worried about the fit / but that rule don’t apply concerning my relationships…oh these things they have been playing on my mind.’ ‘Too Shy’ (already the band’s biggest and best hit to date) carries this theme through to one end point; a distressed protagonist hunting down free wi-fi late at night so that he can have cyber sex with ‘the girl of your dreams’. It’s funny, it’s smart and it’s irresistible pop music.

I understand why some people call this The 1975’s White Album but that comparison doesn’t really stand up to close scrutiny. For a start, The Beatles and George Martin meticulously sequenced The White Album so that although it was a diverse assortment of styles and moods it never felt anywhere near as jarring as ‘Notes on a Conditional Form’ does. Here the grotty punk of ‘People’ grinds against an actual orchestral interlude, which in turn gives way to an early 00’s UKG homage. There are no smooth transitions. It’s deliberately destabilising. Even more startlingly, the most frequent and disorientating clashes happen within the first half hour. Momentum is frequently and consciously repressed. Other than the aforementioned ‘People’, the album’s opening 20 minutes contain nothing of much forward velocity. ‘Frail State of Mind’, the weakest of the early singles, skips along on a fractured loop and sleepy melody. The Birthday Party has a similarly lollaping rhythm and is full of meandering guitar noodles, causal background chatter and a vocal track that almost seems to tumble out of Matty Healy of its own slinky volition. Amidst the above two tracks is ANOTHER ambient, orchestral interlude. And yet this opening section coheres so much better than it has any right to, building towards an absolutely triumphant middle third. Of course It’s discordant but that feels like the correct setting for ‘Notes on a Conditional Form’.

The album is loud and assertive; at times I wonder if It spreads itself too much, almost obnoxiously, like a city banker on a crowded tube. But in general, I’m enthralled at the audacity and bowled over by the band’s ability to pull it off time and time again. Only a handful of acts have ever had the ambition to attempt anything this wide reaching. But a little much is sometimes made of their stylistic sprawl anyway – this isn’t genre tourism; the band always bend sounds and styles into their own image, whether it’s garage, dancehall, emo, ambient or folk. It still ultimately sounds like The 1975. Anyway, you won’t venture for too long without tripping over a bright DX7 synth or a pin sharp guitar lick. For all their evolution they still retain that essence of the desperately precocious, 80s indebted guitar pop band that first released ‘Sex’. On this occasion they skew back to that sound most explicitly on the hopelessly nostalgic ‘Guys’, an endearing ode to friendship formed and sustained over two decades. On the back cover of the album, the four of them appear, in black and white, backs to a wall, propped up alongside one another. It’s a moving image to accompany a moving record. ‘Guys’ builds to to a climax where Matty repeats over and over ‘you guys are the best thing that ever happened to me.’ After listening to ‘Notes on a Conditional form’, you see exactly why he says that.

9.5/10

The 1975 ‘A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships’ – Review

On the fabled ‘Antichrist’, from The 1975’s debut e.p ‘Facedown’, Matty Healy imagined hands and tongues ‘all covered in blood’ as he drowned in reverb amidst organ swells and cavernous drums. This was an unexpected diversion from the e.p’s lead track, ‘The City’ which was a heavily compressed and maddeningly catchy indie rock song. Even at the time people didn’t quite know what to think. In the Pitchfork review, Ian Cohen felt like the singles had ‘gone missing’ from the e.p, with an ‘unwise’ 3:1 torch song to burner ratio. From day one critics thought they knew what The 1975 should be about, and were somewhat incredulous when that wasn’t delivered to them. But for this band ‘Sex’ and ‘The City’ weren’t the point anymore than the ambient interludes, or post-rock instrumentals were. Dismissive critics be damned, The 1975 followed their noses, delivering numerous e.ps and two expansive albums of wild and experimental pop music. The threads have all been tied together on ‘A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships’ their most accomplished album to date. And surprisingly, critics seem to be on board, the culture having finally caught up to the band’s ravenous, insatiable taste for anything and everything.

Like the previous two albums ‘ABIIOR’ has a wide remit whilst also self referentially honouring the band’s impressive mythology. It opens with ‘The 1975’, a distorted callback to ‘The 1975’, the atmospheric introduction to ‘The 1975’, which was of course the debut album by The 1975. The same song opened their sophomore album, ‘I Like It When You Sleep For You Are So Beautiful Yet So Unaware Of It’ and has already been confirmed to appear on their next album ‘Notes on a Conditional Form’. If any of this reads as pretentious or ridiculous then you’d be half right. Crucially, the band’s endearing enthusiasm – not to mention incredible ability to pull this stuff off – overrides any cynicism you enter with.

Imagine the audacity it takes to create a song like ‘The Man Who Married a Robot’, a blatant update of Radiohead’s ‘Fitter, Happier’ that actually improves upon the original. Imagine out-Radioheading Radiohead. And then doing the same thing to Bon Iver (‘I Like America and America Likes Me’), Coldplay (‘Surrounded by Heads and Bodies’) and Drake (‘TooTimeTooTimeTooTime’). Like those stunt drivers who slide in to tight parallel parking spots, they only pull it off because any other outcome would be disastrous and unthinkable. The margins between genius and hilarious are so ridiculously tight when you’re getting Siri to narrate a monologue about a man addicted to the Internet whilst Disney strings swirl and sway in the background. It’s not hard to see how it could all go terribly wrong. This is an all-in, everything or nothing move, and they nail it.

It’s a difficult game, trying to establish your own identity whilst playfully pinching from the biggest artists in the world. It’s one they’re now masters at. All at once ‘ABIIOR’ will remind you of your favourite bands, whilst reminding you of no one so much as The 1975 themselves. Lead single ‘Give Yourself a Try’, which hurtles forward on the strength of a tinny drum loop and loudly compressed guitar squawks, has been compared to Joy Division but in truth the song is too soaked in irony and self awareness to sound like anyone else but The 1975. It’s a koi pond with a shimmering surface, reflecting whatever the listener projects – the millennial anxieties of infantilised adults, the post-modern sense that truth is evasive or the nagging, existential fears you can’t theorise away. It’s funny because revelation often is and emphatic because we live in urgent times. ‘What would you say to your younger self? Growing a beard’s quite hard and whisky never starts to taste nice’ is one of many quotables that tumble out with stunning regularity.

In a similar vein, ‘Love It If We Made It’ is an impassioned anthem for doomed youth and a fitting approximation of the intermingled dread and humour you feel whilst randomly scrolling down your timeline. Like a modern day ‘It’s the End of the World and We Know It’, the song is imperious and frantic in the face of possible annihilation. Cascading synthesisers and beats carved out of metal sound like aggressive approximations of the nostalgic 80s sounds the band utilised on their debut album. Just as ‘Give Yourself a Try’ slightly recalls a demented Joy Division, ‘Love It If We Made It’ may well remind you of a sinister ‘Downtown Lights’, that mid 80s melancholic masterpiece by The Blue Nile. It’s already been called a defining statement of 2018 malaise, and for good reason; it does after-all quote the leader of the free world (‘I moved on it like a bitch’) and will be censored for radio as a result.

Generally though the album steers away from the political, choosing instead to focus on the personal. As the title explicitly states, the band are particularly interested in the role that the internet plays in creating, sustaining and destroying modern relationships. Last year Arcade Fire were met with ridicule when they attempted to dissect online culture on ‘Everything Now’. It wasn’t the first time that a band of a certain age seemed sneering and out of touch when tackling the prickly topic. The 1975 succeed where Arcade Fire don’t by virtue of being totally submerged in online culture. They aren’t simply spectators, or commentators, they are absolutely immersive on a day to day level. Because of this they are able to comment on the sense of dislocation and alienation that is often a consequence of social media, in a tone that is empathetic rather than judgmental. They are able to prod without shooting targets down in to flaming wrecks. As Matty put it in an interview, he is ‘just asking questions’, not necessarily stepping up to answer them. Even the most moralistic moment, ‘I Married a Robot/Love Theme’ is narrated by Siri, and has an appropriately neutral, even handed tone. No approval, no condemnation, no judgment. Just observation.

Besides, the key word in the title is ‘relationships’ not ‘online’, and in 2018 It would be impossible to write about the former without some understanding of the latter. The internet is just another outlet for our self loathing and a vessel for our terrible excuses. When on ‘Tootime’ Matty’s girlfriend scolds him for not liking her Instagram post, and Matty replies ‘I only use it sometimes’, you get the point that is being made – and it actually has very little to do with social media. The narrator of ‘Sincerity is Scary’ (Matty himself?) has been using Social media in a vain attempt to control how people perceive him, ‘putting off conceiving’, putting off adulthood, content in his own self-satisfaction. The internet is a terrible escape, as all consuming as the pills referenced on ‘Surrounded by Heads and Bodies’ or the Heroin alluded to on ‘Its Not a living if it’s not with you’. Whether it’s drugs, fame, music or the internet, these characters are crippled by the crutches they rely on and desperately seeking real human affection.

More than an inquiry in to online relationships, this is evidence of one, as album standout ‘I Couldn’t Be More In Love’ suggests. The song is a soppy love letter to the band’s fan base; a group, largely but not exclusively, made up of teenage girls, who congregate on Redit, Tumblr and Instagram. A group who feel that they know Matty intimately from 180 character tweets and meet and greets. It’s a genuine relationship, of a sort, and a modern translation of a very old form of hero worship. But perhaps it’s more reciprocal than in the old days. Matty’s generosity towards his fans, and the genuine sense of connection he feels towards them, radiates through the song’s lyrics, which are desperately emotive. ‘What about these feelings I’ve got?!’ He pleads – a throwback to the Emo sentiments of ‘Sex’ and ‘Robbers’. And If that’s not emo enough for you, then the very next song is called ‘I Always Want To Die (Sometimes)’.

Needless to say it can all get a bit heavy at points. ‘TooTimeTooTimeTooTime’ is as close as the album gets to fun frivolity. Its tropical house bass-line, auto tuned vocals and four to the floor beat will prick the ears of whoever is streaming all those Drake rip-offs saturating Spotify. More of this flavour would have been appreciated, especially in the second half of the album which does get bogged down by a sense of its own soul crushing import. A few of the slower tracks would benefit from some of the intensity and urgency of ‘Give Yourself a Try’ or ‘Love It If We Made It’, not to mention the uncomplicated fizz and froth of ‘TooTimeTooTimeTooTime’.

Maybe this is a good point to say that whilst I admire what the band have achieved here, and appreciate it’s numerous successes, I’m not sure that I like it as much as ‘I Like It When You Sleep…’ an album that was somehow, all at once, even more daring, and subtle, while taking itself a whole lot less seriously. ‘I Like It When You Sleep…’ was welded together by glam 80’s glue, all gated reverb snares and twinkly synthesisers. It’s harder to find ‘ABIIOR’s sonic through line, which makes the album feel that bit less cohesive and more overwhelming, despite being twenty minutes shorter.

The band have carefully styled ‘A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships’ as a classic album in the vein of ‘Ok Computer’ and ‘The Queen is Dead’ – albums very obviously about something. Statement albums. Albums designed for eternity, as much as they were for their moment, that nonetheless sounded as natural as breathing air. Make no mistake, ‘A Brief Enquiry In to Online Relationships’ is very much for this moment – and in that sense it’s a purposeful, exemplary record. Whether it survives in the same way as those other classics remains to be seen. On a melodic level the songs lack the sublime grace of, say, ‘karma Police’ or ‘There is a Light That Never Goes Out’, and Matty’s voice is not particularly memorable in and of itself. You also have to question whether an album as transparently ambitious and calculated as this can ever truly transcend its context. It’s expansive, technically nuanced, musically diverse and thematically complex – but it’s doesn’t cohere in quite the same instinctive, effortless way those classic albums did. Maybe that’s the point. This is a post-modern album, not a modernist one. My expectations are perhaps too tied to a canonical vision of Rock music that The 1975 do not pay heed to. It tries very, very hard to be very, very important; The 1975 know it and have acknowledged it. Your move. Too confusing? All over the place? Simply too much? Well, have you been online recently? That’s 2018 in a nutshell and this is the sound of 2018.

9/10

The 1975 ‘I Like It When You Sleep For You Are So Beautiful Yet So Unaware Of It’ – Review

The 1975’s second album is called ‘I Like It When You Sleep For You Are So Beautiful Yet So Unaware of it.’ There are seventeen tracks. One of those tracks is a six minute ambient instrumental called ‘Please Be Naked’. Another is named ‘The 1975’ and is itself a new arrangement of a track called ‘The 1975’, which was the opening song on their debut, ‘The 1975’. The target audience for the album is 14 year old girls. Lead singer Matty Healy said in a recent interview ‘it’s art. The world needs this album’. If any of these facts make you feel queezy then you have two options. You could stop reading now and try to avoid the band at all costs. Or you could embrace that queezines. Try and listen without prejudice (as one of the band’s influences, George Michael once said). Try and listen as a hormonal, uninhibited teenage girl might listen. Learn to love The 1975, because on this evidence, they’re going to be massive.

‘Love Me!’ That’s the imperative, and the hook, placed right at the front of this gigantic slab of pop and the band do everything in their power to convince you that you should. It’s an album that lures you in with juicy choruses, primary coloured chords and bags of personality. Once it’s got you hooked it starts to flex its muscles. Over the course of 75 minutes you’ll hear flashes of Arena Rock, House, Shoegaze, Post Rock, Ambient Music, R&B, Acoustic Balladry and Gospel. All of it is rendered through The 1975’s baby pink pop lens that amplifies the hooks and emphasises melody. The broad strokes are emphatic but the finer details are equally well executed. The production is glistening and detailed. Evocative retro sounds rub against elements of contemporary bass and electronic music which shows The 1975 keep one eye on the past and one on the present. It looks to the 80s for inspiration but They are a thoroughly modern band in their outlook – or ‘post-ironic’ as they put it. They don’t have the hang ups and cynicism that used to blight rock fans for too long (judging by one or two sour reviews, some critics don’t seem to have moved on); they will use the Careless Whisper sax on ‘This Could Be My Dream’ with smiles on their faces, just see if they don’t.

They make unbelievably provocative decisions like calling their album’I Like It When You Sleep For You Are So Beautiful Yet So Unaware of it.’ They’re trolling the haters. One song on the album is called ‘Ughhh!!’ And it’s about Matty’s own exasperation with his drug habit. Like most of the lyrics on the album it aims at profundity but ends up revealing a certain self obsession. It’s this pretentious element that has raised the eyebrows of A LOT of people, especially as Matty falls flat on his face just as often as he hits the mark. But you appreciate the effort to say something meaningful even when it doesn’t work out. That ambition results in one liners that are as sharp and witty as anything coming out of the rarified corridors of indie rock or experimental music. And when they fall short they do so with humour. ‘Was it your breasts from the start? They played a part’ is just one gloriously ridiculous example. They just don’t care about how daft they sound and that’s admirable because so much modern music lacks risk. Bands are scared to say anything out of the ordinary but The 1975 are never afraid to dip their toes in uncharted water.

Matty Healy frequently comes out with smart Alec remarks dripping with self-importance, as if he’s the first person to make the connection between personal decay and cocaine or realise that celebrities are prone to being vacuous. But his tone Is never didactic or pandering. He treats his young audience with respect and understands that they will come to their own conclusions. He sings frankly about drug use, mental health issues, death, religion, fame and love – the big subjects – and never offers easy answers. He does this with tremendous tenacity and a tongue always near his cheek. He’s utterly pretentious but damn, he knows it, and he worries about it. After name checking Guy Debord he exclaims ‘I’m the Greek economy of cashing intellectual cheques.’ As preening and smug as he can be, It’s hard to hate him when he comes out with self-deprecating put downs like that.

Some of the criticisms I’ve read, aside from often being utterly patronising and condescending to the group’s young audience, are awfully pedantic. I’ve seen criticisms that they’re too emo, that their songs are poorly structured, that the album’s too long (well duhhhh). Come on. There’s nothing wrong with a bit of emo, who cares how the songs are structured when the hooks hit this hard and hip hop albums, never mind mainstream pop albums, are routinely longer than this and nobody says a word. It’s as if the world has come to expect a group of four guys with guitars to play it safe. The 1975 are a throwback in some respects to groups at the start of the CD era, like Red Hot Chili Peppers and Smashing Pumpkins – bands full of ideas, with the ambition to match. How have THe 1975 answered their critics? In the video for the delicious house-pop number, ‘The Sound’, criticisms flash across a baby pink screen as the band play in a box to a hoard of sneering haters. By the end of the video it’s the critics who are in the box and the only thing they can do is point and scowl.

At at the end of the day I could talk about the unnecessary and overlong instrumentals, the considerably less enjoyable middle section and some of the many lyrical misfires – but that would be missing the point. These things speak to the band’s range and ambition. As is often the case, The 1975s flaws only make them more loveable.

Why aren’t this brilliant band being more regularly applauded? Critics have thus far been allergic to the 1975. They are a serious band making trivial pop music, which is an unfortunate category to fall in to if you’re seeking acclaim. If you’re a male band, play guitar music and have mainstream pop aspirations beyond just the indie/punk demographic then you’re in trouble. It’s the reason Coldplay and The Killers have never received their due – as if what the have achieved is easily attainable?! The lesson they want us to learn, it would seem, is that If you’re in a band you BETTER know you’re place. Leave pop to the pop stars and stick to being alternative. But we’re told guitar music is dead aren’t we? Here are a band with sky scraping tunes, ambition, real personality, good looks, style, a young fan base and bags of attitude. They are a young, talented group putting three minute pop songs on the radio, with guitar solos, and having hits! This is the best pop-rock album since ‘A.M’. My advice? Learn to stop worrying and love The 1975.

9/10

The 1975 ‘The 1975’ – Review

It’s easy to like The 1975’s music but it’s hard to love the band. Their hedonistic lyrics, pretentious interviews (they come off as scenesters incapable of saying anything sincere or original) and very on trend image instantly make you cynical. Then there is lead singer Matty’s inescapable position as offspring of annoying ‘loose woman’ Denise Welch (try forgetting that once you’ve learnt it!). It is however unfair to suggest that his mum has somehow privileged him this well-earned number one album. The band have been slogging it out on the Manchester circuit for the best part of a decade, and success has been a long time coming. It was early last year that I first reviewed their brilliant single ‘Sex’ (re-released this month) and at the time I called it one of the best songs of 2012. I actually prefer it now, and I’ve heard it a lot. It still sounds fresh, urgent and catchy as the plague; somehow that hook becomes more potent every time I hear it.

You’re probably familiar with their other two big singles as well. There’s the equally sticky ‘Chocolate’ and the less impressive (but passable) ‘The City’. Each of these songs is different; ‘Sex’ is straight up indie rock whilst ‘The City’ has a heavier vibe. ‘Chocolate’ is a spindly synth pop number with impenetrable lyrics about having ‘guns hidden under our petticoats’. Elsewhere on the album the band flirt with post-Weeknd+Drake r&b (see the three instrumentals that act as surprisingly interesting interludes) Prince-lite funk (‘M.O.N.E.Y’) and blatant James Blake balladry (‘Is there somebody who will watch you’).

‘Settle Down and ‘Girls’ suggest themselves as future singles; the former has a yelping hook reminiscent of M83, and the latter could have come from the soundtrack to classic 80’s rom-com ‘Cocktail’. Although The 1975 never entirely blend these styles and influences into something they can truly call their own, they still do a very impressive job of mixing them together on one very long debut album that doesn’t sound anywhere near as laboured as it should. They clearly have a nose for good hook and that is a strength that they use to their advantage time and time again on ‘The 1975’. It almost sounds like a compilation of singles rather than a conventional album. This is offset by sparkling production courtesy of Mike Crossey, who does a fantastic job of piecing together the eclectic sounds.

Before ‘The 1975’, and before Sex, the band went by the name ‘Drive Like I Do’ and put out a song called ‘Robbers’. That was released at a time when Coldplay and Snow Patrol used to make weepy choruses for the end credits to Greys Anatomy, and ‘Robbers’ could have passed as a single from either band. It appears on the debut album in an altered form – still recognisably the same song, but with a future-R&B production that makes it sound less 2008 and more 2013. It’s a nice tune, but it leaves me with that cynical feeling I mentioned at the start of the review. As much as this is an endlessly playable debut, and it does a better job of making guitar music sound viable in 2013 than almost any other record released this year, there is still something a little too calculated about the band and their music. A degree of style over substance if you like. But what style – sleek, stylish and pure sex.

8/10