Review Summary: Go outside? Seems unlikely
Being Matty Healy must be hard work. Between the endless stream of live shows, production work, interviews and smug pretentious ramblings on twitter, he and his three friends somehow find time to bash out some pretty stellar tunes. They’re certainly a band that have been getting better and better as time goes on. While it can argued that their 2nd record, the dreamy, day-glo pop of ‘I Like It When You Sleep, For You Are So Beautiful Yet So Unaware of It’ was their finest hour, the tides turned with the release of third record in 2018 ‘A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships’. Suddenly, the band that were once seen as One Direction for art girls became critical darlings. The 5 star reviews rolled out and their two previous releases were offered a critical re-evaluation. The group matured in a way. Songs simply titled ‘Sex’, ‘Girls’ and ‘Chocolate’ had given away to furious synthfunk anthems about the state of the world. Electropop gave into shimmering glitchy dance decked out with touches of jazz. It clearly hit a good spot, and the band scored their third no 1 record. The world waited with baited breath as the group announced their fourth record was set to debut as early as the next year. How could the biggest band in the world top what could’ve been their finest album? Could they? We would just have to wait and see.
As time passed, the wait grew larger and larger until finally a string of new singles were released; each radically different to the last. A spoken word ambient track featuring Greta Thunberg, a burning glam-punk stomper, a glitchy but soothing garage number, a jubilant pop rock gem, a strange dream country shuffle, a lonely folk ballad, a glorious stadium pop masterpiece and a heartwarming ode to old friends. Eclectic and diverse, the prospect of a 22 track album became daunting. Could the band really make something so seemingly unwieldy and fragmented a good listen? Suffice to say, they did, albeit not with a couple of errors. Notes on a Conditional Form is an unusual record in that it really can’t seem to make up its mind on what it wants to be, and really that seems to be the point. In an age where we can choose whatever we want to listen to, regardless of genre or length or sound at the press of a button, The 1975 have crafted a record that feels less like a cohesive album and more like a massive playlist. Songs jump from rumbling bassy UK Garage to country sendups to even jazz rap and orchestral. A song like the Emo-cum-shoegaze snippet ‘Then Because She Goes’ crashes into the gentle ‘Jesus Christ 2005 God Bless America’ which then immediately heads into the jubilant country pop of ‘Roadkill’. It’s musical whiplash in the best possible way.
Are there some missteps? Naturally. A record as long as this is bound to be bogged down by some filler. The unusual and twitchy IDM like ‘Yeah I Know’ is a bit too long and repetitive for its own good and the surreal dancehall cut ‘Shiny Collarbone’ breaks up an extremely strong run of songs from the jangly britpop ‘Me and You Together Song’ to what may be the group’s finest hour, the colossal new wave banger ‘If You’re Too Shy (Let Me Know)’. Several ambient or Garage tracks also slow down some of the record’s pace, most glaringly at the very start of the album where the thundering, throat shredding chaos of ‘People’ is sandwiched between a lengthy title track and a beautiful but unusually sequenced orchestral piece (‘The End (Music for Cars)’). While this isn’t really a bad thing since the music itself is really really good, the stop and start nature of the tracklisting can be at times awkward and in all honesty, the album would be essentially perfect if some of the filler tracks were sliced out and the Album was made much more palatable.
Healy’s lyrics take an interesting turn once again. Each album his band releases always sees Healy changing up his writing style. While their debut mainly focused on the romantic troubles, drugs and sex, their second album was a monolith of self loathing, angst and vanity. They steered off into more universal affairs such as politics, the effect of the internet on modern life and optimism before Healy finally turns inwards and begins to deconstruct himself. “I never ***ed in car, i was lying” he bluntly states in album highlight ‘Nothing Revealed/Everything Denied’, pretty much throwing up a middle finger to the now iconic opening tracks on the band’s first three records and their previous hit ‘Love It If We Made It’ (all four tracks feature lyrics referencing sex In cars). Elsewhere, he explores his fears of forever being tied to the band until his death (‘Playing On My Mind’), social isolation and anxiety (‘Frail State of Mind’) before finally coming full circle with the lush and touching ‘Guys’, a song about his three best friends: the rest of the group. Sure, it’s cheesy but I’ll be damned if it isn’t unbelievably sweet and cute. While some of the lyrics can be a bit... well ridiculous (‘People’ manages to rhyme “Obama” with “Marijuana”), Healy’s lyrics managed to never buckle under their own weight. For the first time they don’t feel smug and vain. Critical and introspective but never self pitying and patenting. And for a writer like Matty, this is an incredible step forward.
So, is Notes all it’s cracked up to be? I’m about 90% sure. The record’s strengths lie in its writing, diverse sound and some truly spectacular pieces of music, while cracks occasionally form with its bloated runtime, and inconsistent sequencing. It’s an album that is practically designed to be cut apart and rearranged in playlists and hell, that may be just what the group was intending. So is this The 1975’s ‘Kid A’, like how their previous record was their ‘OK Computer’?. No. If anything it’s their ‘Hail to the Thief’. Long, diverse and a perfect record to dissect and reform. Only time will tell where they go from here, but it looks like it can only be up.
4/5
Best songs: People, Frail State of Mind, The Birthday Party, Roadkill, You and Me Together Song, Nothing Revealed/Everything Denied, Tonight (I Wish I Was Your Boy), If You’re Too Shy (Let Me Know), Guys
