the 1975

obv everyone loves 'love it if we made it.' 'give yourself a try' is more trad-1975 but i think it's a really incredible version of that.

not saying the album doesn't live up to it or anything -- i need to spend more time w it -- just reacting to tracklist rankings that suggest 'give yourself a try' is bottom tier

i love all of the bright little guitar embellishments that burn behind the "disorder" riff around the second verse/chorus

i would love an ep or short alb of ‘give yourself a try’ type stuff

more and more i'm like "oh yeah of course 'sincerity is scary' is the best 1975 song"

I don't get this band at all nor do I have anything interesting to say about it yet here I am anyway. I'm vicariously enjoying your enthusiasm, though, especially Brad's.

it's strange how we put more faith in whatever Healy says about intentions than we do with most other artists we discuss

Antichrist

— matty (@Truman_Black) November 30, 2018

i would love an ep or short alb of ‘give yourself a try’ type stuff

― flopson, Friday, November 30, 2018 1:52 PM (fifty-seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the first album!!

otm

/their best album by far *ducks*

I always feel that way (sometimes)

that dazed digital interview is awesome, prob the best i've read this cycle

― princess of hell (BradNelson), Friday, 30 November 2018 4:18 PM (three hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah the stuff about phone addiction seemed super sharp to me.

it's strange how we put more faith in whatever Healy says about intentions than we do with most other artists we discuss

― I like queer. You like queer, senator? (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 30 November 2018 7:39 PM (twenty-seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Perhaps this reflects that the band's stylistic parameters and affiliations seem so amorphous and omnivorous (have we updated the list of the artist comparisons from earlier in the thread?) that it's like listeners need Matt as a tour guide in order to understand how it fits together and where it's supposed to be going - "oh, this building over here is where the Chancellor of the Exchequer used to sit, now it's the Museum of Modern Art..."

I'd rather run into the museum's outer wall without looking

tl;dr – This is my favorite album of 2018.

Loved the Joy Division influence in "Give Yourself a Try" since my first listen. Love the abstract guitar during the verses. Nice sequencing following up that propulsive opener with "TooTimeTooTimeTooTime," which may be the catchiest thing they've ever done. Lyrics blur the lines between another woman vs. behind-her-back drug usage. I've been there with heroin so tons of lyrics from this album are resonating with me, not just in terms of talking about drug addiction, but the mental frailty and obsessive nature that comes along with it. It takes about 3 minutes for "How to Draw/Petrichor" to really get started, but once it kicks in ... holy shit, it's really something. First half of the track is a pretty hard pump-fake to the UK garage-sounding second half of the track. Seems like there's more vocal manipulation on this new album than on past efforts. Pretty firmly in the camp that "Love It If We Made It" is the best, most poignant song of the year. (Tell me something I didn't know.) Not in love with "Be My Mistake" but it's a good change of pace and doesn't overstay its welcome at first listen in sequence. Absolutely in love with "Sincerity Is Scary," love the jazz instrumentation. Reminds me of Kendrick's "LOVE." and D'Angelo's stuff more than anything previously released by this band. Sounds incredible and really opens up on good headphones! I'm sure there have been comparisons to Bon Iver for "I Like America and America Likes Me." but I haven't read the thread in full here. Sounds like something Bon Iver would sing over a light trap beat, which is pretty awesome considering how it reads on paper. The repeated lyrical couplet "I'm scared of dying / It's fine" is one of my favorite moments on the album. At risk of sounding like a lazy music journalist, "The Man Who Married a Robot" really does sound like the 2018 answer to "Fitter Happier" in the best possible way. First chord of "Inside Your Mind" feels like time is frozen when I hear it. Might be my favorite song on the whole album. Still wish the shoegaze-y guitar part blossoming in the final chorus would be a little more Sonic Youth, a little less Raveonettes (as much as I love both). The hooks all across "It's Not Living..." are glorious and catchy as all heavens. Gotta admit that "Surrounded by Heads and Bodies" drags a little bit (like the end of the last album) but it segues into "Mine" so it's still hard to complain. The instrumentation in that track is gorgeous (again – headphones!) and sparse in the best way possible. Sounds like something from a vocal jazz album! Really subtle and beautiful. Not sure how I feel about the schmaltzy penultimate track yet, but the closing song is a lighters-held-high anthem, and I couldn't be happier overall. We have 7th row tickets to see the 1975 at Red Rocks in a few months, and they now have enough songs to fill a 20-song setlist with something special from start to finish. Great album and a really compelling listen!

Taken as a whole, I can really relate to the 100-miles-a-minute approach of Matty's lyrics, the ground they cover, how his brain darts from political unrest to personal turmoil to romance to the world at large. It probably seems scatterbrained and incoherent to some people, but that's exactly how I think, too, and how my brain works. I can't really think of an album in the last few years that feels more tailor-made for my own life experiences and thought process. Absolutely love this album! And yes, those of us who picked these guys as their "new favorite band" really couldn't have done any better. Hoping the next album is similarly incredible.

Just finished my first listen to this and will definitely be giving this a few more listens before I fully make up my mind how I feel about this one, but so far I agree with kitchen person regarding the intro (I don't like what they've done with it, I find the sound of it obnoxious and felt it was quite a bad start to an album I'd been looking forward to) and I agree with imago in the sense that I don't think this is better than the previous one (which I now consider to be one of my favourite albums released this decade) ... I thought the production on 'Give Yourself a Try' was lacking, but 'TooTimeTooTimeTooTime' is fucking great, and the album got better from there.

no one cares

I'm already going in for another listen, for me that's a good sign.

*hears opening chords of "inside your mind"* *every lighter in the arena ignites*

― princess of hell (BradNelson), Monday, November 26, 2018 12:34 AM (four days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this post ages badly once you get to the lyrics lol

incredibly dark song set to the chords from idk 'baba o'reilly'

'How to Draw/Petrichor' strikes me as being one of the best things this band have ever done.

this post ages badly once you get to the lyrics lol

― ILX’s bad boy (D-40), Friday, November 30, 2018 5:56 PM (six minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol you don't say

what i love about that song is how it sounds enormous, as if it were actually occurring in an actual arena, but incredibly lonely (bc the arena is empty). its lack of development kinda confirms that it's a thought spiral (which is one of the reasons why it reminds me of "me")

listened to this 4 or 5 times today. i was craving more 80s rock moves but otherwise i wasn’t let down. i think the ‘too many ballads’ problem is worse on ILIWYS

'Inside Your Mind' comes across to me as musically being a slower variation of 'Give Yourself a Try' ...

just came back from a release party in Chicago. 80% girls and young women, and also probably like 50% POC as well, which is a nice reminder to receive when you're a little too embedded in music media discourse. heard twitter mentioned a bunch of times, which i found funny—there's a definite difference between "Twitter Gen Zers" and "Insta Gen Zers" if that makes sense, and the 1975 feels informed by the former, feeding in from tumblr as many of them have over the years.

i am starting to utterly love this album. the only speedbumps for me are "be my mistake," "sincerity is scary," and the robot song... and even so i'm not skipping any of them.

i might be crazy, but some of the phrasing in "i like america" reminds me of "my teenage dream ended"

Ah, of course the intro is actually the piano chords from 'Sincerity is Scary' colliding with "robotic" vocals, that makes quite a fair bit of sense thematically.

Album is sounding even better on third listen.

love this album

what a closer

they shud do slapp happy next

"how to draw/petrichor" is really sublime, what can't this band do

turrican is onto something when he notes the glacial pace of "inside your mind" -- it does almost sound like something they slowed down to 0.7x. it sort of seems like the polar opposite of "give yourself a try" though

god this is so fucking good

what about
THESE FEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEELINGS I'VE GOT

"inside your mind", "i couldn't be more in love" and "i always wanna die (sometimes)" immediately the 3 best songs i've ever heard

your memories are sceneries
for things you said but never really meant

Y'know, for all of the use of autotune as effect on this album, I feel that the record also contains some of Healy's best singing, particularly on the ballads/slower tracks: 'Inside Your Mind', 'Surrounded by Heads and Bodies' and particularly 'I Couldn't Be More in Love' ... I know that there's been some criticism about the number of ballads on this new one upthread, but I genuinely believe that many of the ballads are highlights.

Having said that, if I was asked to pick favourites from this album, I'd probably near enough name the whole album as this point.

Another thing I'm beginning to appreciate about this band is the way they place some of their older musical ideas in new contexts. It's not just that they have a different version of their "theme tune" on each album, it's the way 'Lostmyhead' is an extension of 'Facedown', or the way 'How to Draw' is treated in comparison to the earlier piano-led version. I suppose the similarity between 'Settle Down' and 'She's American' was intentional, too.

we're fucking in a car
shooting heroin

increasingly convinced that Love It If We Made It is song of the year

Surrounded by heads and bodies is only me and Ross. Ross played bass. I played everything else. George and Hann produced it. And this is the only song where George sings a line #abiior

— matty (@Truman_Black) December 1, 2018

You’re supposed to be like ‘you played drums!?’ Not all ‘which line!? ooooo I love George’

— matty (@Truman_Black) December 1, 2018

increasingly convinced that Love It If We Made It is song of the year

― ufo, Sunday, December 2, 2018 4:04 PM (forty-six minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I don't know if it's my song of the year, but it's one of them. I actually like it far more than the song it's obviously influenced by. Have you seen any of the live footage of it yet? It gets the crowd really fucking amped.

Agree there are too many ballads, agree ballads are the best part. Also think the album's great strength is that it is explicitly about heroin, which is sort of a shift from the expected coy shit a la, say, Jason Pierce.

Inside Your Mind is so pretty.

i put on the eps this morning. i still can't believe how good this song is

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKQox1ztjKA

and why stay if you hate it so much?
you think you're well cool
you just write about sex and killing yourself and how you hardly ever went to school

It's a great song. That and 'Antichrist' would be two easy picks for me to put on a personal best of.

I've got to admit that this new album was kind of a tough nut to crack, but I put it on when I went for a run this morning and it finally clicked. Not that it's particularly good music to run to, but it really did make me pay attention to the fine balancing act he is doing. It's a particularly compelling juxtaposition that he does not seem like some navel-gazing sad sack, just kind of compulsively transparent, or at least the character he thinks he is playing is.

I'm actually really glad that I waited until the album was released to hear the likes of 'Love It If We Made It' and 'TOOTIMETOOTIMETOOTIME', because I just know I would have played those songs into the ground by now.