THE CONFESSIONS OF THE 1975 with the band just two months away from releasing their gargantuan second album, elliot mitchell travels to the us to join them on tour. we talk songs, sins and self discovery with the 1975’s matty healy. es, this is the line for the 1975 concert. It’s a Friday night in early December, about 45 minutes before the quartet are scheduled to take the stage at Manhattan’s Terminal 5 venue. On an average night, the line out the door might be 10 to 15 fans long. Tonight, it stretches all the way down 56th street, around the corner to 55th street, and around that corner a quarter of the way back up. It seems like there are more fans (and accompanying parents) than can possibly fit inside the 3,000-capacity venue. Once every minute or two, another couple of incredulous fans approach the end of the line in disbelief, meekly inquiring as to whether there might be some other explanation. Nope, get in back. Inside, the venue is already packed to the fire exits, blan-
keted by throngs of girls with blowouts and black skirts and dudes in leather jackets and/ or makeup — though the females outnumber the males roughly four to one. On the floor and over social media, the crowd buzzes with chatter that the newly minted pop star Halsey is somewhere in attendance. At one point, the lighting onstage shifts, and the pack on the floor rushes to the front with such simultaneous ferocity that, viewed from above, it looks like a tidal wave crashing towards the stage. The band don’t even go on for another ten minutes.
The 1975 are bigger than you think.
“How many tickets can you sell?” That’s 1975 frontman Matty Healy’s instant response when I ask him how he judges his band’s popularity. He continues: “If you’re talking about emotional investment — which is where I see the value of what I’m doing — then yeah, because that’s the ultimate test: Do people want to come see you? I think if you want to see how big your band is, book a show.” If so, it’s a little hard to wrap your head around the maniacal crowd response to the 1975, because it doesn’t seem like they should be that massive — not in this country, where their
self-titled 2013 debut album peaked at No. 28 on the charts, and never really threatened pop radio. Perhaps more importantly, they’re a proper band, and kind of a weird one — one as influenced by M83 as they are by the Strokes, one whose first LP is labeled with nine separate genres on its Wikipedia page, one who would consider being called the Japan of their era a compliment. It’s been awhile — maybe since Franz Ferdinand somehow got big enough to play the Grammys — since we had a band of style-obsessed, proudly European heartthrobs that was anything more than a cult act.
But the evidence is mounting that the 1975 are on the cusp of stateside stardom. They recently passed the million-follower mark on Twitter. Last weekend, they were the musical guests on the Larry David-hosted episode of Saturday Night Live. When they return to New York in May, they will have graduated from the mid-level Terminal 5 to the stadium-sized Barclays Center. They might not even need a crossover hit to be one of the biggest bands in America. “They are a pop band, and they’re all ‘hot guys,’ but on top of that, they can play their instruments really well, they can write really good pop songs, and they’re amazing live,” explains Amber Bain, who’s opening for the 1975 on tour as the Japanese House, and whose Clean EP featured co-production from Healy and drummer George Daniel. “I think [they] get that kind of crazed boy-band fanbase, but it doesn’t seem so, like, hollow.” “We don’t sound like any other band from Manchester, ever,” Healy says. “And that’s what being a Manchester band is.” Certainly, no boy band in history (except, y’know, the Beatles) has ever released an album like the one the 1975 will drop on February 26. I like it when you sleep, for you are so beautiful yet so unaware of it — more on that title later — is a 17-track, 74-minute behemoth that veers wildly between ‘80s faux-funk, ambient house, gospel-tinged R&B, Autre ne Veutlike fever-pop, and acoustic balladry. It’s impossible to form a credible opinion on it after only one listen, because the album you think you’re listening to shapeshifts unrecognizably about a half-dozen times over the course of an hour and a quarter. It’s a bold move for any group, let alone a rising one with as much to lose as the 1975 currently have. But the Manchester sensations are defined by their boldness, and they think the proof is in the meticulously crafted, multi-flavored pudding that makes up their sophomore album. “I think that it’ll change a lot of people’s minds about who we are as a band,” Healy predicts of the double-LP, as we talk in New York’s Inter-
scope office, his frizzy black hair forever falling over one eye, his hands digging into the couch like he’s searching for a lost memory. “You can’t not acknowledge the record for what it is. It’s obviously a body of work which a lot of time and attention to detail has gone into.” One thing’s for sure: “We can’t be regarded as a boy band anymore.” The 1975 — Healy, along with friends George Daniel (drums), Adam Hann (guitar), and Ross MacDonald (bass), who all high schooled together in Wilmslow, just south of Manchester — formed in their first incarnation shortly thereafter. (“We were about five s**tty bands with five s**itty names,” he remembers of the group’s emo origins.) The lads spent their early days decidedly on the margins: “At the time, we were super-nerds,” he relates. “Loads of bands, when they’re 17, 18, they’re like the cool kids and know other bands…We were not that.” But the group noticed that while their fanbase wasn’t particularly wide, it was already fairly intense. “We were playing clubs to 200 kids, where 100 of them would wait afterwards to meet us, with neck tattoos,” Healy says. “The first bit of our fandom was hardcore.” The 1975’s original standout tracks — the effervescent nonsense of “Chocolate,” the screaming tension of “Sex,” the cinematic melodrama of “Robbers” — earned them attention from the U.K. press, but not an immediate record deal, largely because it was tough to parse the true identity of the band behind those wildly varied songs. Eventually, they signed to British label Dirty Hit — run by their manager, Jamie Oborne — and put out a quartet of EPs that established the group’s diverse sonic palette, flitting between languorous nü-gaze, streamlined synth-rock, and heady R&B, all while building excitement for their 2013 debut LP. Co-produced by buzz-band pied piper Mike Crossey (Arctic Monkeys, the Kooks, Foals), the 1975’s self-titled, 16-track full length sounded like a million dollars’ worth of studio detail and a greatest hits’ worth of
“We don’t sound like any other band from Manchester, ever,” Healy says. “And that’s what being a Manchester band is.”
hooks. It debuted at No. 1 in their home country. It becomes clear very quickly that the dedicated fandom that surrounds The 1975 is not limited to the UK, as I arrive at the venue in Philadelphia around three hours before the show to find around 1000 fans queuing outside. Some have sleeping bags and tents, others sit shivering on the sidewalk waiting for the doors to open – and when they do, it’s a rush to get as close to the stage as possible. The band’s bodyguard informs me that in the states some fans camp out for up to three days before the show, something that seems to perplex most of the band and crew, particularly when it’s winter on The East Coast and the weather is far from temperate. The fierce dedication of followers is one of the first things I bring up with Healy as we sit at the back of the band’s tourbus, their home on the road and where I’m staying throughout the trip.
he explains, peering out the window at a line of fans sat behind a fence. “When it comes to the things I’m into, I don’t share the same fanaticism as some of these kids, but I love the ceremony of it. If they either want to prove their commitment to themselves or to other people in this way then I think that’s fine.” We start to go into more detail about this idea that some fans have found their identity through the band. When The 1975 first emerged, their monochromatic aesthetic brought a somewhat refreshing edge to the norms of popular music culture. Sure, a lot of bands wear all black and look moody in press shots, but a wealth of visual themes carried through live shows, day to day clothing choices, videos and the sonic groundings of their self titled debut album, created an immersive experience for impressionable teens to indulge in, something much deeper than colour choices alone. In short, there was perhaps a new identity there to latch onto, which
many have done and continued to do so, making The 1975’s fandom unlike any other group in their position – “We’re like the biggest band in the world that no one’s ever heard of”. Healy fondly recalls the impact the identity of the band has had on some of their more well-knozzwn fans, most notably a teenager who goes by the twitter handle @Tomm1975, who has followed them since the very start. “He’s really changed in the last three years, he’s found himself, he’s pursuing his interests” Healy says with a content smile, “and kids like him have almost been liberated – not necessarily by trying to mimic the person I am, but by following the sense of freedom I have with my image.” It’s apparent that Healy places great importance on challenging the discourse of popular culture and thus influencing the masses, most importantly through the band’s music. I like it when you sleep is an undeniably forward thinking effort, a record that captures the nuances that have defined pop music across the decades and reinvents them in The 1975’s image, injecting colour into their old aesthetic and pushing their definitive sound to every end of the spectrum. When premiering ‘Love Me’ on BBC Radio 1 last year, Healy briefly aired his opinions on modern pop music, and ultimately what needs to change in the genre, something that’s addressed both on the album, and in one of our conversations over the five days. “Pop music just needs to have more thought behind it” he onders when I probe his thoughts on the current landscape.
“pop music just needs to have more thought behind it “I mean we’re obviously allowed to have pop music, and it’s great and it’s what I do, but good pop music is hard to find.”Healy goes into great detail dissecting how small sub-genres have become increasingly reappropriated in modern pop, from the evolution of trap house in the charts to the new wave of dancehall that Justin Bieber is currently capitalising on. Naturally, this leads to usthe inspirational grounding of this record – the 1980s. Throughout the tour the importance of the 1980’s repeatedly comes into play in the day-to-day life of the band, from a singalong of Hall & Oates’ ‘She’s Gone’ (which drummer George Daniel describes as “the best break up song of all time”) in the dressing room after the Philadelphia show, through to the in-depth chat Healy and I later have on the merits of Steve Winwood’s ‘Higher Love’. Unsurprisingly then, the new record has distinct elements
of the decade, from the Phil Collins-esque drum fills on ‘She’s American’ through to the downbeat synths and driving bassline of ‘Somebody Else’. But as we sit down for dinner in Columbus, Ohio on my second day in the US it becomes clear the band want to explore the 80’s in a different way to their predecessors. Columbus “The sensibilities of the 80’s culture have been totally exploited in dance and pop music because people have gone for the blaring, superficial elements of what the 80’s was, whereas what we take from the 80’s is the ethos, the spirit of records that were unabashed” Healy attests, before further detailing the role of this decade on his inspiration; “This is an entire album that speaks of a time when pop music wasn’t afraid to be pop music, it wasn’t over encumbered with self awareness and cynicism, it was free.
CAUSE YOU’RE MY MEDICINE
You had bands like Japan and Scritti Politti and Peter Gabriel pushing the boundaries, and it was an amazingly rewarding time. The feeling of songs by those artists, not necessarily the sonic stylistics, was what we try to capture, which I guess is what makes this album hard to put your finger on.” Matty Healy The 1975 quote 2That last point proves particularly poignant when listening to the record as a whole. Sitting at 17 tracks and one hour, 15 minutes long, there’s no denying that to some it may prove to be a trying listen, but once you get under the surface and see the complex thought and meticulous craft that has gone into every track, it becomes apparent that it could well be one of 2016’s most inventive, important albums. Cuts such as ‘She’s American’ and ‘Ugh!’ will appeal to fans of The 1975’s poppier pursuits, while the record’s title track takes their sound further into electronic territories than ever before, something which Healy describes as coming from a love of Four Tet and “electronic music that doesn’t rely too heavily on loops”. It’s the more urgent moments of the record that really shine though, as ‘If I Believe You’ pits sultry instrumentation against a gospel choir and introspective lyrical work, and ‘The Ballad of Me and My Brain’ sees Healy give his most visceral vocal performance to date, cut with witty wordplay “..would you sign an autograph for my daughter Laura, because she adores you, but I think you’re shit“. Sitting as one of the album’s most intriguing tracks, Healy seems to take particular pride in how this song came into fruition, mainly because it’s deeply personal grounding; “With that song I wanted to do The Replacements doing Dr Seuss… and after I stopped doing certain things, I felt a bit mad, but I kind of had a knowledge that I was going to be alright. Which is why there’s a resigna-
tion to my madness in the opening lyric “well I think i’ve gone mad, isn’t that so sad.” “In the pre-production I got about four or five lines in before realising that we’d have to cut it up and record it in bits” he details, “but then I had a bit of a psychedelic experience at FYF Festival, so the next day in the studio I was a broken man, I felt really on edge. That night I did the whole song twice, then that second take made it onto the record.” Self preservation and adapting to change are overarching themes on this record, and perhaps unsurprisingly, each track has a different personal relevance to Healy and the rest of The 1975. As we travel from Ohio to Chicago I learn that the band didn’t give the address of the studio to anyone apart from those in their inner circle, and the process of making this record meant shutting themselves away and putting them-
selves on lockdown. “There’s no room for democracy in art” Healy says when I ask him more about the band’s creative process, “and I’m not willing to compromise or dilute the integrity or sound of the record because of the opinions of too many different people, especially when the record is so personal, it’s about the fundamental aspects of being a person. I felt selfish a lot of the time because I didn’t come up for air and I didn’t think about anyone else’s standards, it was our standards and our truth.” Despite leaving the studio a couple of months ago, the record seems like it was only just finished for The 1975, as I learn that they essentially haven’t stopped between albums. After their last day in the studio the band flew back to the UK and went straight from the airport to premiere ‘Love Me’ on BBC Radio 1, a process which Healy describes as “almost like I’d just put my trousers on”. After that, the band spent the following weeks in vigorous rehearsals for the live show, before embarking on the tour. Because of this intensity, it would be fair to say that Healy is in two minds as to how he feels the album will be received; ”I just laugh when I hear the record now, because to me every song is a room, and a set of people, and I still know what the project looks like, it’s just not a thing for me yet.”
YOU’RE ALL I NEED. ACCORDING TO YOUR HEART, MY PLACE IS NOT DELIBERATE, FEELING OF YOUR ARMS. I DON’T WANNA BE YOUR FRIEND. I WANNA KISS YOUR NECK.