There was a
time when The 1975 were horrifically uncool, their debut album was a successful
indie crossover with a faux edge and little credibility. After multiple cryptic
messages left on social media many thought the band had burnt itself out.
Instead this was a rebirth, and this album Healy and the boys are in splendid
Technicolor.
The first single divided opinion like most of The 1975’s work, ‘Love Me’ is an infectious coked up attack on pop culture. It was impressive and danceable, a turn in a completely new direction. ‘UGH!’ and ‘The Sound’ followed, each cheesier than the next, the latter sounding perfectly placed if released by PC Music. The new album, laboriously called 'I like it when you sleep, for you are so beautiful yet so unaware of it’ could have easily been binned as an overly ambitious vanity project by a band sitting on the wrong side of pretentious. However, despite the naysayers, The 1975 have managed to create a stunner of a second album.
‘I like it
when you sleep…’ sits somewhere between millennial kitsch and soulful
atmospheric indie. It is something of a heavy load at points, you’ll need well
over an hour to listen front to back but for the most part that is time well
spent. In terms of sound ‘I like it when you sleep…’ changes almost every
track, a feat in itself for the Manchester band.
The two
lead singles ‘Love Me’ and ‘UGH!’ slap you in the face with feel good pop,
demanding you to listen, playing with gender roles and distortion. ‘A Change Of
Heart’ is a sweet seemingly autobiographical slow jam, with Matt Healy asking
whether he is too old to be smoking weed and talking about a partner popping a
pic of her quinoa on instagram. A lot of the songs on ‘I like it when you sleep…’
are silly, yet the way that Healy plays with lyrics and imagery tricks you into
thinking that you are actually listening to something rather clever.
Instrumentals
such as ‘Please Be Naked’, ‘Lostmyhead’ and the title track pull the album together.
Each with a distinct emotion they feel well composed and stand out within such
a massive album. ‘Loving Someone’ sits in the middle of the album, with huge
similarities to The 1975’s first album but it experiments with modern electro-pop
with great success. The closing few songs of the album drag in comparison to
the energy of the first half, however I cannot think of any band ambitious
enough to provide seventeen songs on a second album.
The 1975
are the product of when conceptual meets pop. Like any great artist they are
constantly evolving both sonically and visually. The dreamy pink and white
aesthetic throughout all their videos and artwork is like candy for their
Tumblr and Instagram obsessed fans. Their resurrection could have gone two ways
and maybe it is genuine skill or blind luck from The 1975, but this bet has
paid off.
