The 1975’s New Album is An Unexpected Step Forward

The 1975 in concert in 2017. Photo by Pete Summers/REX/Shutterstock (8961613n)

A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships is a thoughtful and daring step forward for pop music.

The 1975’s latest album is a pleasant surprise. It is refreshingly honest and delves deeply into Healey’s own personal experiences while at the same time managing to offer a quite serious and illuminating critique of modernity. The internet is not some dream world from our technological fantasies, it can be cruel and it can give us a false sense of security. The lost soul in “The Man Who Married A Robot” masks his loneliness with the internet and social media, only to be left alone, with nothing but a Facebook profile for his legacy.

If you are thinking “woah, this all sounds a bit intense for The 1975s” then don’t worry, it sounds nothing like that. The album is poppy and full of catchy, joyful tunes which mask the sincere and emotional content of the songs themselves. ‘TooTimeTooTimeTooTime’ is one of their poppiest songs and yet he sings about the pains of unfaithfulness.

Some critics have boldly related the album to Radiohead’s masterpiece OK Computer and perhaps rightly so. The innate fear of technology which is embedded deeply in the album is not dissimilar to the fear Thom Yorke expressed in the band’s best-selling record. The syncopated beats and electronic rhythms in “How To Draw / Petrichor” sounds at times so much like Radiohead’s later works that it is almost passable for a Kid A bonus track with a guest singer. In “The Man Who Married A Robot,” the band uses Siri to read the lyrics, automatically evoking comparisons to OK Computer’s “Fitter, Happier.” It’s clever, depressing and extremely thoughtful.

What has happened to mainstream pop? It seems that the 1975’s have transformed it into something greater. They have not lost the tunes or the fun but have demonstrated that a song can get you up and dancing or singing along on the radio without covering the same old cliches.

The album is innovative in the way it switches genres at a moments notice. “Inside Your Mind” is a slow-dancing 80’s style ballad and it comes moments after the weird and fretful Siri track which is it follows. After, the poppiness and sickeningly happy tunes return for “It’s Not Living (If It’s Not With You)” which is a generic love song about missing someone. Well, it mostly is but Healy still manages to reference some Cartesian and Platonic philosophy with the line “And Danny says we’re living in a simulation”, which is slipped in quickly before returning to the cliche line: “It’s not living if it’s not with you.”

Overall, A Brief Into Online Relationships is a bold step forward to pop. It succeeds in being serious and fun all at the same time and if you have not been a fan of The 1975’s before, this album could be the one to convert you.

4.5/5