The 1975 have just released their third album, ‘A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships’. A staggering work of shifting expectations, it’s quite probably their masterpiece. To find out more, Dork headed round to frontman Matty Healy’s house to quiz him on what life’s currently like in the most exciting band on the planet.
The 1975 tell big stories of little moments. Kaleidoscopic, full of heart and with an eye for detail, both their wide-eyed self-titled debut and the attention-grabbing ‘I Like It When You Sleep, for You Are So Beautiful yet So Unaware of It’ soundtrack a Peter Pan sense of adventure in a world that’s heavy with the everyday. They find the strange, beautiful and the beautiful, undeniable.
For a hot second, their imminent third album ‘A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships’ was going to be their last. The final chapter in a story about growing up and finding yourself, that grand conclusion was soon postponed as the band realised they weren’t done yet.
Instead, ‘A Brief Inquiry’ finds The 1975 facing the end of the decade, on the cusp of their thirties, and still asking questions. It’s Bonfire Night, and we’re at Matty’s house doing the same. “It’s a weird time for me,” he admits.
The band have been out of the spotlight since they headlined Latitude in 2017 but they’ve not exactly been taking it easy. If following up their world-reaching second album wasn’t enough of a challenge, the band also had to contend with Matty taking himself to rehab to deal with opiate addiction. It’s one of the many things he wrestles with across ‘A Brief Inquiry’. Mortality, technology, growing older and breaking dawn hope are also looked at with an open mind and a tilted head.
Finished in September, five years to the day since they released their debut, the band have spent their time since working on fourth album ‘Notes On A Conditional Form’, which also makes up the second part of this Music For Cars era.
It sounds hectic because it is. There’s an urgency racing through The 1975 now that inhabits everything they do. Every decision is fearless. Change is always an option, but the band are dedicated to growth, not fresh starts. If you thought The 1975 were big before, brace yourself. Things are about to get massive.
“I’m not scared; I’m not hiding from anybody. I don’t give a fuck,” he beams. That stance is one he repeatedly takes on record. “I’m excited for these live shows. We’re going to be so much better than we’ve ever been. We’re so much fitter and wiser. We’re better players; the songs are better, the show is better.
“It needs to be like The 1975 on crack, but not actually on crack. It’s a good vibe. I’m really excited,” he repeats. ‘The 1975’ was about wanting to be known. ‘I like it when you sleep…’ was about proving they had more to say. “Because that second record was critically acclaimed, you naturally feel like you need to play all the critically acclaimed stuff live.” Now, the band are beyond that. They’ve proved their point. It’s time to play.
Which is, anything goes. The 1975 do whatever they want, and it’s an attitude they’ve poured into ‘A Brief Inquiry...’.
And this record dazzles. Across the fifteen tracks, The 1975 dabble in everything.
“I just love beautiful sounding stuff. That’s my only barometer for what passes,” he declares. “It happens like that because that’s how I listen to music. That’s how I consume things,” so why would The 1975 be any different? This band is how they see the world.
“You want the record to have a life. We just keep going until it feels dynamic. You wouldn’t think to put ‘How To Draw/Petrichor’ there, right? That’s the point. The juxtaposition of form. When it delineates who I am, that’s when it feels complete. When it’s got enough scope to have a personality” - that’s when it’s finished. “Personality is a very dynamic thing,” he explains.
That’s especially true when you’re Matty Healy. He asks lots of questions and answers most of them himself. He makes grand, outrageous statements that make for great headlines, but they’re never in isolation. He changes his mind. He gets distracted. He’s excitable and shares secrets. There’s always more. All of him is in his music.
Right now though, Matty is in a strange place. He has to try and put ‘A Brief Inquiry...’ out of his mind. It’s unlike him, “but I haven’t been thinking about it that intensely. It was such a relief when it was done; I’ve been revelling in that. I was so quickly onto ‘Notes...’; I haven’t been thinking about ‘A Brief Inquiry...’ since we finished it. I had to crack on. I had to forget about it because I didn’t save anything for the next record.”
There was no, ‘oh this is good, better hold it back because we’ll need something good later’.
After a split second to think about it, Matty admits he’s desperate for people to hear ‘A Brief Inquiry...’.
It’s a bold thing for an artist with a beloved back catalogue to say. It’s even bolder when that artist is in the midst of making their next album.
“‘A Brief Inquiry’ is the truth of where we are. Musically, philosophically, that’s where we’re at. And the next record will be where we’re at then. I don’t know what it’ll be like. Maybe it’ll be more exhausted. It’ll be different, but they’re all so different.
“Is this record better than the first record?” Matty asks himself, thinking out loud. “It depends. It depends what your gauge is. My intention was always to soundtrack the lives of young people, or myself and by proxy the lives of young people. So, if your barometer of success or quality is how much it’s done that, then the first album is better. The first album is more nostalgic and wrapped up in peoples adolescence and journey, so it is kinda silly of me to sit here and boringly say ‘this is our best record’ because it’s a bit of a cop-out. It’s just an easy answer to sound confident.”
Well, ‘A Brief Inquiry...’ feels like The 1975 if they started to fall apart. It’s jagged, all exposed edges and frayed ends. “But in a good way?” he asks. Of course. “All of the sounds and sonics had to be sincere and believable. That’s the same with ‘Notes...’, but I don’t know that much about ‘Notes...’ yet. But that’s fun,” he promises. “I’ve got a while to make that record. I’m just going to make a record I want to listen to.” Right now, it’s still taking shape.
“’Notes...’ is very raw. There are a lot of demos. It’s not like there was stuff that didn’t make ‘A Brief Inquiry...’. ‘A Brief Inquiry...’ just became what it was, and other songs just weren’t for that record. So there are loads of different ideas. Lyrics come very late anyway, so I try and not stress myself that much about it.
“There are a few lyrics. There are ideas,” he promises, “but there’s a bunch of music. It’s deconstructed. It’s quite English. We’re always going back to a time in our life and referencing certain bits of music from there, and I think this is referencing a lot of UK garage and the feeling of driving on the M25 at night.” Music for cars, right?
“Of course some people are going to regard it as not as good, and some people are going to regard it as our masterpiece. It’s like, is ‘Amnesiac’ worse than ‘OK Computer’? Yes and no. That’s not a question. It’s a different time, and it’s a different thing.” All The 1975 can do is capture the moment and have fun with it.
The idea of living in one moment for so long doesn’t make sense.
That was his first reaction when he and the band’s manager, Jamie Oborne first started talking about two albums. Matty was walking to drummer George Daniel’s, talking to Jamie on the phone about culture, the times and how things work within that.
They were talking business, but this is The 1975. They never really talk business.
So every decision is led by the heart. Two albums was also their way of course correction.
The only thing is, Matty loves being in The 1975 more.
So, of course, their first thought was “Let’s do two albums.” On the phone, Jamie went silent before he started to laugh, and that’s when Matty knew it was the only way.
That determined dreamer who refused to give up on his band despite being turned down again and again by labels way back in The 1975’s early history, is still looking up at the sky and wishing.
“Anyway, what’s the worst that could happen? I make a shit record?” Matty asks. “This is the thing,” he continues, before admitting: “It’s not actually relevant, made me think about the safety of art. People will make an assumption, and they’re fair, astute assumptions, about someone like Pete Doherty who lives the way his music is, but the majority of artists don’t.
“The reason for that is because when you have a creative outlet, that’s this huge environment and a vast part of your life where you can take immeasurable risks. You do things that are so bold; you could never bring yourself to do them in your real life.
Hype, belief and excitement, it’s what The 1975 live for. Whenever they’re faced with a decision, they ask themselves ‘What would The 1975 do?’
“When we’ve been at our proudest, it’s when we’ve been at our boldest. It’s when we stand by ourselves and think of ourselves as The 1975. What would that band do? What would the band that scares us a little bit do?
On their first two albums, The 1975 wore their hearts on their sleeves and hoped other people would relate. ‘A Brief Inquiry...’ sees the band just as bare and open, but this time around, they know they’re not the only ones feeling this way.
When he felt something in his chest, he reached for the guitar.
But within that, the frustrated idea that “we’re just left to decay, modernity has failed us’ gives it a purpose. They’re not sitting on the fence; they want to be involved. They’re asking questions of everyone.
“When I’m talking about The Internet” - which is going to happen when you call your record ‘A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships’ - “people ask do you like it, or are you scared of it? The fact you haven’t been able to draw that conclusion is the whole point. I’m posing questions. I’m asking, is this weird? Are we all fucking doomed? It’s not we are doomed! This is weird! I’m part of the conversation.
“The things that I am standing up for are things like the idea of being sincere, being true, being soppy in front of being sarcastic.
“I’ll stand by those, but I’m not going to start telling people which way they should be leaning politically. Well, I suppose I do that a little bit, but not in my songs so much. The fact that ‘Love It If We Made It’ comes from me tells you, regardless of whether or not I’m saying I believe in social democracy, it’s obvious that’s what I’m doing.
“You shouldn’t listen to artists that much. Artists get asked about so much stuff, but artists should be utopians. They should be idealists. They should become part of the cog that turns to move a progressive movement into reality. You shouldn’t get the most self-obsessed subset of humanity and ask them ‘how should we run the world?’ Artists shouldn’t be answering this kind of question, but they should be talking about the subject cleverly, wittily and idealistically. Newspapers and stuff can get boring, but music is never boring.”
With a title like ‘A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships’, the fact the world around them is all rubble and brimstone and because it stretches so far, it would be easy for The 1975 to be cynical on this record. They never are, not even for a second.
Instead, ‘A Brief Inquiry’ manages to find an optimism in everything. They’d love it if we made it. Go on, give yourself a try. It’s encouraging people to believe and be bold, but it’s what The 1975 do best.
“The idea of making music for 16-year-old me, in a bedroom with headphones on, has always been such a vivid image for me. It’s probably so innate now; it’s not what I’m drawing from consciously. I’m not thinking about the John Hughesy thing, but I’m still doing it because it’s who I am. When I was 16, the idea of music was so experienced and so carnally felt, and it was so personal. Of course, there are people who experience music for parties and as part of the world, but for me, it was the world.”
The 1975 want connection. It means they’re not alone in this.
Elsewhere, there’s the spoken word peace of ‘The Man Who Married A Robot/Love Theme’, which is somehow over the top, funny, sad and poignant with every spin. The slow burn beauty of ‘I Couldn’t Be More In Love’ which dances with a surrender to emotions. The end of the world endurance of ‘I Always Wanna Die (Sometimes)’, which is perhaps the most vulnerable and powerful The 1975 have ever sounded.
“I wanted to be constantly excited and challenged by what I was doing. I wanted to denounce the majority of the stylistic things we’ve done before. Even though we were making a record, we treated each moment so delicately and wanted it to be perfect in its essence.
“I tend not to write a song about the same thing twice, just because it’s such a personal pursuit and I do it to make myself feel better and have a purpose, so I need to do other things. The main ethos of the record is profound to me, and not profound at all, at exactly the same time. The idea that all of our communication outside of face to face is mediated through The Internet is not even an interesting thing to make an analysis of.
“The iMessage you sent to find the house, the Deliveroo I’m going to get later, the Uber to the photo shoot, all communication is done on the internet. So what, right? Tell someone that 15 years ago and it’s very weird. It’s the softening of these realities.
“If you look at ‘The Man Who Married A Robot’, all I’m doing is telling a very banal story, but the fact it’s read by somebody that isn’t human feels weird and eerie. Why does it feel weird and eerie?” It’s not just because it’s a story of disconnect and loneliness, or that it reminds you that after you die, your Facebook account will still be there. “The difference between ‘Fitter Happier’ on ‘OK Computer’ when the computer talks and ‘The Man Who Married A Robot’ is that ‘The Man Who Married A Robot’ is a more realistic voice. That voice on ‘OK Computer’ was dead weird, but when you hear Siri, you don’t react anymore. They put those voices in the fucking kitchen and get them to get eggs now. If Siri had appeared on that Radiohead album, it would have been even more sinister and weird, but we’re just used to it. We’re used to all this shit.
“I’m never preachy. I’m never judging. I’m never going to tell people to get off their phones at my show. I remind them that if they put them down, the memory of that moment will be far more potent than a video on an iPhone, but that’s different than getting pissed off about it. I’m not pissed off at the modern world.
He’s hopeful though. And that’s because of you.
“I spend so much time living in my own world and doing my own thing; I don’t think about hope that much. I think about what I’m doing and what I can provide in an artistic context, but when I speak to young people, and especially our fans, I think if there is any hope, it’s the progressive, empowering mentality of a lot of young people that I meet.
“It’s all we’ve got, isn’t it? You’re into denialism or cynicism otherwise. I came out of quite a dark place and time as well writing this record, so there’s an element of hope within that, in songs like ‘It’s Not Living If It’s Not With You’. I do have hope for the resilience of humankind. I’m just not sure where we’ll end up.
“People always want to go back to things, but we need to go forward into something different, and there’s hope there because, with the unknown, there’s the unknown. We could create some utopian society if everyone got their act together. It’s not on the onus of the individual though; it’s on the onus of the powerful. If the powerful reassess what it means to be powerful, then we have a chance. If that doesn’t happen, it’s very difficult because things are set up in the interest of the powerful. Social movements are great if they don’t interrupt that. Things like climate change and looking at green emissions, that’s all great unless it hurts the powerful.”
The 1975 ask questions through stories. ‘Give Yourself A Try’ starts by sharing some of the answers they’ve found: “Friends don’t lie. The only apparatus required for happiness is your pain and fucking going outside. Getting STDs at 27 really isn’t the vibe. Growing a beard is quite hard. Whiskey never starts to taste nice. You’ll make a lot of money, and it’s funny ‘Cause you’ll move somewhere sunny and get addicted to drugs.”
The most important lesson is to give yourself a try. Across ‘A Brief Inquiry’, the band encourages openness and connection. They don’t want divides.
“All that I know is that the only thing that’s ever going to happen is your engagement with other human beings. Everything else is just idea-based stuff. Your communication with physical beings in the real world is the only thing that’s ever going to happen. To not make that as positive, beautiful, romantic, artistic, interesting as possible, is a proper waste.
“That’s a lofty thing to say from someone who watches a lot of Netflix and loves doing fuck all and is smoking a joint during this conversation, I’m not trying to make it like a scene from ‘Gone With The Wind’, but do you know what I mean? This is everything we’ve got, so we should celebrate that. That’s where the optimism comes from. We don’t have anything else apart from this exchange, and I’m fine with that. But we shouldn’t waste it, and we shouldn’t limit it with fear or the idea of exposing yourself.”
Fearless, flawed and proud, The 1975 want others to be just as open. Just as vulnerable. Just as ok with making mistakes.
“The way we’ve got to work is that inspiration won’t come looking for you. Ideas are three hours into playing the same thing on a keyboard. One thing goes wrong, or one thing slightly different happens, and that becomes your route to everything. You’ve got to look for it yourself. You’ve got to be working. Some days, you’ve just got to turn up. If you don’t turn up, it’s not going to happen.
“That’s not an opinion. You can objectively quantify something like importance. It’s not like being relevant or cool. The question is if you go on the internet and you look at the amount that is said, and how emotionally led it is, if you look at the proportion of tattoos and you look through the history of the past couple of years visually with music, we’re there.
“You don’t have to like a band to admit that they’re important. We’ve made an impact. We’ve made an impact on young people. I see it. It’s important to me, it’s a massive part of my life, and if I didn’t believe it, I wouldn’t act accordingly. Music and bands, they were important to me so when I see that replicated in a young person, it’s immediately validated.
“If you want a more ego-based quote, fuck yeah we’re important. Of course we fucking are, we’re The 1975. We’re very important. But that’s how you have to be, right? Behind closed doors or not, you have to believe because that’s what it requires. There’s that indie mentality of acting like you don’t care so you don’t get judged for being shit, but I’ll tell you what: judge me, but I’m not going to pretend that I don’t fucking care or that I don’t love what I do.
Few bands capture the today like The 1975 do. Forward thinking but with one eye on why and who they do this for, the band aren’t just important. They’re relevant. They’re cool. They mean something real. And they’re not done yet.
But their story is far from finished.
Taken from the December 2018 / January 2019 edition of Dork. Order a copy below. The 1975’s album ‘A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships’ is out 30th November.
