The 1975 is an alternative rock group hailing from Manchester, England, and they made a huge debut a few years ago with their self-titled album. I never listened to the first one, but I seemed to get the impression from fans that they really focused on a more vintage synth-rock sound. This second album of theirs seems to follow down a similar sound to that, but it doesn't exactly appeal to me that much. As bright as this album may be at points, I feel like this album tries too hard a lot of the time to be great.
The album is opened up with a short intro track that basically describes the sound of the rest of the album, with these easy synths humming everywhere and slow guitars that make it sound straight out of the 80's. The first real track, "Love Me" is one of my favorite songs here, with a scratchy post-punk riff that stays persistent throughout the song and sounds like it should be played during the opening credits of an 80's teen movie. And the next song "UGH!" is my favorite on the project. It has these squeaky little synths bouncing up everywhere, and has one of the better choruses on the album, although it does get a little cheesy when lead singer Matty Healy drops the line about the song being three minutes long, and then making the song actually be three minutes long. I think that this song is actually where the music starts to go pretty downhill, both musically and lyrically.
The rest of the album transitions from the weird quirky pop music we heard on these first two songs and instead goes to very calculated, boring synth pop that doesn't do anything exciting or do anything to really stand out. The song "A Change of Heart" has a boring drum beat and this annoying synth that wobbles over the entire track. And "Loving Someone" sounds like it's trying very hard to be an anthem even though it's way too quiet and lackluster to really make you feel anything the way an anthem does. "Somebody Else" almost seems like it's trying to pull off an illusion with how bright and exuberant the production is even though there's nothing happening in this song besides the basic synths and drums that are the spine to very boring pop music.
Not only does the music become very one-note, but the whole thing becomes very pretentious. Healy's lyrics and song concepts tend to be either very opinionated or so straight-forward that they're not any fun to listen to. Like on the song "The Ballad of Me and My Brain" where he tries to describe going crazy for whatever reasons, and he just drops a bunch of laughably bad lines about actually losing his brain. I'm not sure if he was trying to be serious with that song, or if he was trying to crack me up; either way, I didn't like it that much. Or on "She's American" where he describes a woman who spends lots of time on Instagram and has some stereotypes about British people and their teeth, as if American women are the only people on Earth to do that? I may just be taking this a little too seriously, but this song just didn't do it for me. Then there's "If I Believe You", where Healy lets everyone know that he's an atheist and will not believe in God. Dealing with religion in songs is often risky and hard to pull off, and I don't think The 1975 did that good of a job here with their very boring, blunt lyrics that literally asks Jesus to show himself.
Lastly, the choice to make a bunch of pseudo-instrumentals and sprinkle them throughout the track listing makes this album very hard to listen to in some spots. There are two in a row with "Please Be Naked" and "Lostmyhead" that both sound very similar, one of the only differences being that the latter inserts drums halfway through the song to bring some sort of energy to the track. And the title track is about as uneventful and drab as you might have been able to guess from the name, which is itself very pretentious and ballsy for an album name.
This album wasn't that great. I won't say it was awful because the performances were all okay, and even though the majority of songs were pretty uninspiring and lacking, they weren't trash. What really takes away from this project for me was that the lyrics and the grand, bright, popping production made it sound better than it was. Even the action making 17 tracks of mediocre songs is pretty pretentious. Still, I recommend you check it out for yourself and make your own opinion.
Fav. Tracks: Love Me, UGH!, The Sound
Least Fav. Track: The Title (Way too long to type!)
