Notes on a Conditional Form [2xLP]
Matty Healy, the enfant terrible of pop-rock, pushes his band all-in with a long, messy experiment that just so happens to peak with some of their sharpest songs ever.
The 1975 are distracted. They are drifting in and out of a podcast while reading the news; putting on a movie and spending half of it scrolling through their phones; living through a pandemic while worrying about the death of our planet—all while finding time to post inane memes on Twitter. Like few working bands, the Manchester quartet has made an art out of multitasking.
Their albums are big, hyperactive statements that embrace the mechanics of our fragmented minds: half-evolved and half-destroyed, cyborgs acting out base desires. They never tire of sharp juxtapositions—airtight pop songs and meandering interludes, noisy tantrums and orchestral motifs, computerized mayhem and naked confession—because their very essence lies in the whiplash.