the 1975

sorry, i didn't mean to come across however i did there, it's fine if you're not into "part of the band" (i love it though)

all that mad background percussion burbling away like a barely-repressed memory, which...you cannot convince me that is anything other than the band's own idea

oh yeah that bit rules. really it's an antonoff-y song in that it sounds so much like the sort of stuff he writes, like i wouldn't have at all been surprised if he had a co-write there. i don't think he's that distinctive of a producer really beyond being a little boring, he very much feeds off what his collaborators give him to work with. but i think he was a decent enough fit for what they were going for on this album, even if i still want that weirdo electronic album with bj burton to be finished some day

nah you were being v nice, i was being deliberately a bit obnoxious in true healyian spirit (and not my usual obnoxiousness ofc lol)

and yeah, the production here maybe isn't as delightfully fucked as it is in their best two albums (the sprawling ones), but it definitely doesn't feel like they've ironed out all the kinks, and they've managed to retain what makes them them. bj burton would be an amazing collaborator obv yes - they're really creative with rhythm textures already so it would be great to see how he pushed their guitar/synth textures

btw i did just listen to OX4 again and it is indeed a good companion-piece to About You imho, beyond even the bassline similarities

i love the strings on "part of the band". the idea was apparently to get them to sound like "street hassle"

True, but my first thought was of Lou Reed's "Street Hassle."

― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, July 7, 2022 9:08 PM (three months ago)

So I guess add Lou Reed to that long list of "things the 1975 reference or remind us of"

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/08/arts/music/1975-matty-healy-being-funny-in-a-foreign-language.html

this is the interview where he confirms the reference point

I love this album but I'll always (probably) prefer sprawling, incoherent 1975 to concise 1975

give me the interludes, all of em

ideally they'll do another album that's both sprawling and coherent

Double albums (in the Old Days) were meant to be inconsistent; that's their fun!

being able to make a coherent double album is a rare talent though & not all are sequenced in as hostile a way as notes was

I like this album (my fifth or sixth play), though Healy's attempts at guilelessness sometimes ick me out (i.e. the line about kissing in the Target toy aisle in "About You").

They should just release a bonus disc of interludes and goofs that fans can shuffle into the album at will. Or play at the same times, like "Zaireeka."

Every time Healy sings the chorus of "Human Too" I expect Phil Oakey to chime in with "That's right!"

turns out warren ellis (!) is to thank for turning "about you" into a shoegaze track

this album is kinda the anti-notes in every way and as a notes partisan it’s not my favorite 1975 project ever but it’s still a very good album on its own merits. “about you” is like an EP song played on “real” instruments (so, kind of a sequel to “you,” or possibly “me” and “you”… together…)

the closer is fantastic, also, reminds me of when they played that countrified full band version of “be my mistake” live and i was like “this should’ve been the version on the record”

i am like sorta hoping they ditch antonoff next time bc as fun as his imprint on them can be ("looking for somebody" such a perfect bleachers song it'll make the entire bleachers catalog unlistenable), idk, despite this record containing healy's best singing ever there's a cloudiness to the vocal production that i do not like and have trouble aligning with this band that makes good-sounding records

healy’s been like “this is the real follow-up to a brief inquiry” and it certainly is

i still quite like notes despite how messy it is, a bunch of their very best material is on it but it just doesn't make for a good listen to front-to-back.

"about you" most reminds me of "robbers" which is going for a similar "with or without you" thing just without the shoegaze

interestingly matty claims he did record a drive like i do ep as planned but he just didn't get around to finishing it before they got too into making bfiafl & one of the tracks originally intended for it was "pictures of us" which ended up on this year's beabadoobee album

yeah keeping antonoff around would be boring, they've done the 'live band all in a room' thing this time and he fit well for that but to stick to it would be regressive

i was kinda worried it would end up being that here but it didn't end up happening thankfully

not hitting my pleasure receptors in the way that notes, i like it or debut do. feels closest to a brief inquiry i guess, which left me similarly a bit colder/more distant, but also i am really enjoying it and think every song is great? the aspects of '1975ishness' that they've focused in on here just aren't my favourite versions of them. defo think the murkier vocal production contributes to that

"when we are together" is the one i am most immediately crushing on

but also i am really enjoying it and think every song is great?

yeah otm, can't stop listening to it

I have the usual trouble with their ballads but it's so damn brief.

it doesn't feel less complete for being brief, which was my primary worry

Thoroughly enjoyed this on my first couple runs through. Only song I don't love is "Human Too," and even that is quite good relative to their other albums's low points.

Is this record unusually front-loaded for them? Sure feels like they stacked up the hits 2-6 where they've historically spaced them out and made you wade through the genre explorations.

there's a false tautological argument happening itt where the longer albums are deemed "inconsistent" but they're really not at all. i also think the idea that notes is all over the place in terms of genre is a bit overplayed, i've said before that there's a certain record store nerd taste that bridges ambient rock, shoegaze, 80s pop, country, garage, techno etc. that album has always just made a lot of sense to me. i like it when you sleep basically just exists in the mid 80s - mid 90s, it's just an amazing pop album i can't see it any other way.

i also think that when ppl think of their albums as bodies of work the focus is 100% on the sonics, but notes has such a coherent narrative POV that i can never align w/ ppl who think it's incoherent or whatever. i'm just gonna cite this post i wrote a few years ago:

the transition from tightly coiled song about anxiety and displacement into the wide open, warm, choral salvation of "nothing revealed" is really effective. the whole middle section is really the key to this record.... the only way you could find the transitions abrupt is if you think about the songs' relationship to each other strictly in terms of genre. the emotional thread connects. "if i was your boy" channels the search for salvation into a fleeting encounter, "shiny collarbone" shatters the scene & then the narrator finds himself running back to whatever hotel or motel he can find in order to pour all the tumult into his fav camgirl. even "playing on my mind" after... "i won't get clothes online cause i get worried about the fit / but that rule doesn't apply concerning relationships"... he can't shake it. anyway i find the POV of this record very coherent and can't really listen to it w/o playing the full thing, which i do all the time.

― J0rdan S., Wednesday, August 19, 2020 9:58 PM (two years ago)

i don't love the opener of this album, it feels a bit smushed together production wise. but i do think that "happiness" has an almost "break my soul" level reorientation w/in the context of the tracklist. the openness of the groove stopped me in my tracks coming out of the opener

"looking for somebody (to love)" is amazing... i thought the live version posted up thread was even better

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQC68ui90JA

given the nature of this record i guess it scans that it would lend itself to live performances. sadly i also think the production is muddy in a way that makes the live arrangements of these songs feel a bit revelatory

"wintering" i really love, lyrically i think it finds one of the most natural landing spots on this record. it's another one written w/ jacob bugden who is beabadoobee's guitarist & has been working on the drive like i do project w/ matty

i love the cool guitar coda to the opener of this album

“wintering” is sort of like what if “menswear” were a pop-rock song. obv the subject matter is different but the detailed approach to the subject matter feels similar

I agree that the opener sounds more smushed than it should. The "and this is what it looks like" bit also feels like way more of a James Murphy reference than "this is how it starts" from "Sex" ever did. Otherwise it's a great sound for them and the lyrics are peak Matty. I also like the way the arrangement pokes back through at the end of "When We Are Together". A bit of an obvious trick but an effective one, and it punctuates the specific feel of this album, not as more consistent or coherent than the previous three albums, or even more tailored necessarily, but more recursive maybe. It feels like an album delivered almost entirely from the POV of the narrator in "Me and You Together Song".

"Wintering" my early favourite.

"wintering" was actually written for drive like i do but then ended up on this album

Pretty sure that when Matt decided on “this will get bigger, if you know what I mean / I’m sorry if you’re living and you’re seventeen” he immediately leaned back and said to himself “oh yeah, that’s the core, the heart music”

oh bj burton has a writing credit on the "the 1975"

i’m really thankful they put the sax guy on every track. been waiting for that eventuality since idk “this must be my dream”

some next-level Matt dancing in that clip..

Ann Powers!

There's a name for the kind of guy Healy tells us he is within these deceptively blithe ballads and dance floor burners; it's one that's suited rock stars like him, with their disheveled charisma and well-annotated little black books, for years. Critiquing masculinity while maintaining his position within the enduring hierarchies that put those bad boys on top, he's the one you love to roll your eyes at. He's a dirtbag, baby, in a long line of antiheroes who interrogate the shapes of male privilege from the inside, even as they benefit from its persistence.

https://www.npr.org/2022/10/14/1128796265/the-1975-dirtbag-being-funny-in-a-foreign-language

started reading this before i realized it had multiple subheds about the dirtbag archetype, don’t really agree with her insights into the songs either

"I'm gonna stop messing it up," Healy repeats in "Happiness" as the beat sweeps him up. But he knows that if he wants, he can go on messing things up pretty much forever.

1. he doesn’t repeat it
2. the following lyric is “because i’m feeling like i’m messing it up”
3. never let accuracy get in the way of your thesis i guess

"happiness" is more way more interesting to me as a song about experiencing love while, in the very margins of your thinking, doubting its reality

is ann the only music critic still getting paid for writing thinkpieces that thread together several modern topics of discourse, haven't encountered one of these in a while lol

she showed me what love is. i'm acting like i know myself

I'm not much for accuracy with lyrics tbh. Accuracy matters at karaoke and not even then.

Drawing a link btw Kurt Cobain and modern “incels” seems to be the critical trope of the moment.

yeah I sort of think that if you’re going to attempt a text-based analysis of a work it’s necessary to get the text right

I’m one listen in, apart from the songs we’ve already heard the one I’m most into is “about you” — layering their early sound under shoegaze fuzz seems like a pretty foolproof formula

"The Proud Boys ape grunge styles, and incels express anxieties about sexual disempowerment that strangely echo Cobain."

I thought the proud boys wore Fred Perry and Ben Sherman style stuff

I'm not much for accuracy with lyrics tbh. Accuracy matters at karaoke and not even then.

― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, October 15, 2022 10:14 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

accuracy actually does matter for close-reading

pretty disappointed in matty for leaving ann powers on new years eve and also being the unabomber

same

accuracy actually does matter for close-reading

― flamenco drop (BradNelson),

It's still a sympathetic take. Healy's always come off as a rascal, scamp, asshole, whatever -- a long tradition with male frontmen. Mishearing lyrics doesn't change for me the effectiveness of that take. It's still a fucking long essay, though, and after the first few hundred words my attention wavered.

The friction between being an unabashed rock fan and the fact that a lot of the charismatic dudes are inna dirtbag style which is both off putting and attractive (even if their actual dirtbagness is maybe a pose) rings p true. Surprised she didn’t make room to mention the dirtbag (not pose) rock king Ryan Adams.