the 1975

TFW When no GF is significantly less nuanced than this and is pretty obviously rightwing propaganda. it is all about normalizing violent responses from white men to the same issues of inequality and anomie everyone is dealing with. trash.

this, while better, falls to the same general problem of most over-identification as critique which ends up celebrating its object, but that's just the hedonistic core of all art irrespective of intent and a danger to anyone who attempts it

I really dont see how this is 'celebrating' it -- he clearly finds it repulsive!

your association of these chord changes and 'vibes' with 'celebration' are exactly what is being pointed to...the manipulative nature of such

Perhaps this goes without saying but it's also not the case that drawing links between mass shootings, incel culture, toxic masculinity more broadly and then the way in which aspects of toxic masculinity are deeply engrained within aspects of popular culture's presentation of love and romance is... giving gun culture, the gun industry and the gun lobby a free pass. This is not like saying "this shooting was caused by marilyn manson not guns".

I think to the extent that this needs to be explicit, it's in the aspects of the lyrics which many people probably find most upsetting, the focus on the physicality of the violence, the celebratory "bang bang bang" etc. This boils down to the image of "a supreme gentleman / with a gun in his hand", and the way that this is couplet broadly ironic (how can holding a gun equate with gentility?) but narrowly consistent within the logic of toxic masculinity and its notion of social hierarchies devoid of ethics or even the figleaf of chivalry (the point of the song being: chivalry is a lie). The weaponisation of romance finds its purest and most awful expression in the literal deployment of weapons.

there are lots of songs from the perspective of killers, serial killers or otherwise. I think there's something specific to this type of killer that makes it extra unpleasant. too close to home, too contemporary, something like that.

anyway, just heard the album for the first time, and I think it's only okay. or at least not too much jumped out at me as working at the level of the past few. not bad by any stretch, but maybe a little too musically MOR for my tastes. certainly the '80s music signifiers seemed more on the nose than usual.

poor word choice on my part (although xp to tim i guess it is a relevant concept somehow lol)

tbc i don't think healy is secretly into it, like lee moyers is. i am just saying that the manipulative power of art you rightly note can't be put so easily aside by the intellect, or repurposed simply via the willpower of the artist. of course none of this means that this issue shouldn't be tackled in song form. just that it's hard to do!

https://open.spotify.com/episode/5l3Lw0gSP8kFzZbZsK8uG3

podcast on the making of the album, includes a bunch of demos

lol the hold steady/springsteen version of "part of the band"

lmao "the 1975" started off as an electronic track (that sounded way more like lcd soundsystem but didn't yet have the piano) built around samples from that video of bjork disassembling a tv

how did it sound even more like lcd without the all my friends piano haha

it's at ~33:35 in the podcast, it's more like "someone great" or something than "all my friends" at that stage

& the piano came from a failed attempt at a steve reich-inspired version of the original "the 1975" for abiior!

matty knows balearic as "poolside"

oh damn they play a demo for a completely unreleased song "this feeling" at 1:05:51 which was cut from the album at last minute because it reminded matty too much of his recent breakup. they promise it'll be released eventually though

"it's about time" slaps lmao

at the point in the podcast where matty says "fuck, maybe this is better??!"

would pay good money for something like a the 1975 exploded demo box set

I *just* listened to the Song Exploder on "The Birthday Party" and thought "I could listen to Matty and George talk about this kind of stuff all day"

matty has said he wants to put out a demos collection at some point but matty also says a lot of shit that he doesn't get around to realising for one reason or another

matty is such an active participant in the mythos of his own band & of culture in general that i’m confident we’ll get expansive box sets or demo compilations of all these albums at some point

just a month ago he was talking about wanting to put out a demos compilation covering their whole career in the near future, i'm sure it'll happen eventually (& will be a treasure trove) but idk if it'll be as soon as he was intending because he gets sidetracked so easily

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2Tjr9ux8Wk

anyone else going to mohegan sun in CT b/c the madison square garden show is stupid expensive?

I'm seeing them at the same venue in Chicago as I did three years ago for probably 3x the price. Don't remember exactly what I paid then but it wasn't this.

Last minute of that Part of the Band video is lovely.

I saw them at the Aragon in ... 2016? United Center in 2019. Advantage of United Center is room for a bigger set/light rig, etc. Advantage of Aragon is smaller. Alas, don't know if I'll get to see them this time.

anyone else going to mohegan sun in CT b/c the madison square garden show is stupid expensive?

― adam, Thursday, October 20, 2022 3:11 PM (two hours ago)

i'm thinking about it!

that Spotify "Tape Notes" interview is gold. i'd listen to that about every song they've ever recorded.

the bridge from the Benjamin Leftwich song bit! so interesting. and i totally thought the more electronic "The 1975" was cooler than the one that made the album.

yeah that interview is a gold mine

yeah I need to go back and check their other episode (and maybe some others). and pls make a demos compilation, the 1975

the abiior episode isn't quite as good but still a worthwhile listen

OK, some thoughts, now that I've spent a bit more time with it. It's good, of course; I can't imagine these guys releasing a *bad* record at this point, just a redundant record, which this one *maybe* comes close to being, but not really to its detriment. Like I told one of my kids, the 1975 are always interesting and compelling, like what Harry Styles seems to be up to at his best if he weren't so dead set on playing it safe and boring. I can't wait to listen to the deep dive podcast or whatever it is, because I want to know how these songs evolved into that they are. I think "Part of the Band" remains a clear standout, I want to know how that one specifically grew into this form.

That said, I like horns on records, and specifically saxophone (hell, I love Springsteen), but I really hate how much this album leans on the sax as a sort of '80s signifier. Which of course the band has done before, but it feels a little annoying here, for some reason. I dunno, could be just me.

Oh, and "Looking for Somebody (To Love)," it finally clicked what it reminded me of: Warren Zevon's "Excitable Boy." Except that song is twisted and ott, and this one is very real, which makes it less cartoonish and more disturbing. And teeters on the brink of poor taste.

They go into a lot of detail about "Part of the Band" on the podcast, so definitely give it a listen

Now having giving this album a few listens, it feels like it ends so fast. I mean, it's a pretty normal album length, just not for this band! The feeling is almost more like an EP. I don't think that's really a bad thing though, it just speaks to what a pleasant easy listen the album is

Yeah it feels like “Human Too” should be like a midsection pause for breath before the second half but instead you’re almost at the end.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ws13A_bHXkY

the "even more LCD" version of "The 1975" from BFIAFL

love this album so much

So do I. After the last one I was hoping they would push it further into the electronic/garage direction, and while the "four guys playing in a room" thing of this one is the exact opposite of that, it was absolutely the correct move. This one is pure joy and it just breezes by.

Kind of obsessed with how subtle the drum track on "Human Too" is--the ghostly tambourine (or hi-hat?) taps that flit in and out, the shaker that lifts up the last chorus.

These guys have always, against all odds, been great with sonic nuance and subtlety.

So is it true that the band - in North America, at least - will be "opening" for itself by playing the new album in full (in what would normally be the main support slot) and then playing a set of stuff from previous albums?

Has anyone else heard this?

feel like matty mentioned this in that interview posted earlier

blackstarkids are opening for them. but he did say on IG that they had no “main support” whatever that means. the first show is happening as we speak so it won’t be a mystery for much longer

Black Star Kids are the only band playing with us on tour cos they are my favourite live band rn. And they play before us. And we play after. At 8.30. I don’t know how I managed to make this confusing https://t.co/WPhbtpkH1G

— Matty (@MatthewTHealy) November 2, 2022

matty said stuff on instagram about them doing two sets, the first being the album in full,

from what i’m seeing they don’t quite do the new album in full but the set is heavily front loaded with new songs before they go into older stuff

apparently they've promised to switch up the setlist every night

their stage layout is a house this time

or at least a living room and a roof lol

review of tonight's setlist: they better play more from notes when i see them lol

22 songs:
https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/the-1975/2022/mohegan-sun-arena-uncasville-ct-2bbec0c2.html

I mean, that second set looks pretty great to me. These dudes know what their bangers are ... you could tell that on past tours, too.

fantastic show. super elaborate set and lighting, lots of cool choreography and blocking. crowd was bananas.

do you think they were thinking "what would david byrne do" with the set

it was somehow less twee than that, like there was a lot of... interactivity and interplay between the set and lighting and band that gave it a narrative momentum that felt more sinister/funny than arch/whimsical

apparently Matty sat on the couch and smoked a cig at one point and it got the whole 1975 Reddit pregnant