The 1975 — A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships ANALYSIS & REVIEW
Published 12/09/2018
While I don’t mean to come off as incredibly insincere to the work’s artistic goals, I must say that this is one of the wackiest albums I’ve heard this year from start to finish. A lot is packed into this hour-long work in terms of timbral techniques, effects, highlighted layers, priorities, lyrical messages, and emotive decisions. With that came a big imbalance of what went well and what was missed. I must say that The 1975 never hit it out of park with any idea, however they also never sounded terribly inept. This was quite a roller coaster listen, with moments flowing from one to the next without a lot of anticipation or development. Some were pleasant surprises, such as a nice grounded use of I IV and V with rhythmic countermelodies, but some were crawls to the finish line, such as the annoying childlike synths and autotune that dictated the first third of the work. In the end, this bloated, big picture, stylistically diverse album comes to be a middle of the road experience that’s not very memorable or worth the time, despite some ear-catching moments.
Although the songs were quite all over the place in how they were constructed and what ended up catching attention, I perceived a general strength on the album to be harmonic progressions. That may be the band’s one defining factor that separates the album from being too amateur or careless to match their ambitions. Indeed, the band did have a rather solid grasp on how to create an energized and fun three chord progression in any given tempo. They didn’t always stick to that strength, as was the story of the entire album.
Cohesiveness of ideas was sacrificed, either intentionally by trying to sound free of any form, or unintentionally by having to revert to basic songwriting tropes due to a lack of sustainable talent. In any case, I don’t think the sacrifice was worth it, especially when an interesting harmonic progression stopped for no reason. Take the last song of the album, for example. It starts and ends with an admittedly nice and pleasant descending bassline progression under a pedaled root. However, not once in the song did that progression transform, develop, or become utilized with a melodic idea. It’s pretty close to being a snapshot of the whole album; interesting harmonic ideas serving as bookends between lots of jumbled, straightforward, modern pop bores.
I can point to harmony as being a general strength, but I can also point to the timbre as being a general weakness. While I thought the overall diversity of instrumentation and atmospheres was rather refreshing, it wasn’t great that the loud and synthetic half of the diversity was simply underdeveloped and not executed very well. Sound qualities of synthesizers were poorly chosen throughout, sounding so bright and out of nowhere, as if a little kid’s birthday party is going on in the next room. On the other hand, the band wasn’t so great thinning it out to just electric guitar and bass, either, as that sounded much too pristine, plastic, and constrictive for what the instruments could have possibly given. In all, instrumental personality was generally lacking. There was significant improvement when working within a softer dynamic, and the acoustic guitar especially became active in harmonic delivery and held its own just enough for the texture to be kept thin and basic. Again, though, no strength stayed for too long. This music was but a string of flashes in the pan as opposed to any sustainable shots.
I have to admit, there were moments that left me smiling: the V I IV harmonic progression in “TOOTIME”, the easygoing piano and snare brush mold in “Mine”, and at least the first minute of “Inside Your Mind”, where I finally felt a sense of every musical aspect at the same level of thoughtfulness, settling and working towards one common goal. That’s what the rest of the album lacked, though. Even if one present musical idea was interesting, there was most likely something else present taking some of the shine away. It all tries to be wrapped up in some far-fetched ideologic theme about the way we use technology and the internet these days. Ambitious, but It didn’t really hit home for me, since it was tough to even find a common theme within the music alone. There was lots of good, but lots of crap. This is like a poor man’s transformative concept album. Some may really be drawn to it, but it would likely be because they don’t listen to much of anything older than a couple of years. I guess we’re simply meant to be poor in these modern times. It’s okay, I can suck it up. This isn’t terrible, there’s just lots of better stuff out there.
