On February 26th, The 1975 will launch their sophomore album, I Like It When You Sleep, for You Are So Beautiful Yet So Unaware of It. Almost three years after their self-titled debut album was released, the British alternative rock band is making its highly anticipated return to the music scene with a new record that has fans jumping, and critics praising the group as “the next biggest band in the world.” After over two years of touring and working in the studio, lead singer Matty Healy, guitarist Adam Hann, bassist Ross MacDonald, and drummer George Daniel have completed an extensively-titled album said to be just as coherent and conceptual as the first, compiled of 17 tracks centered around the band’s ethereal brand of soundscape-y, 80s-inspired synth-pop that numerous artists around the world have borrowed and cited influence from.
Since the album was announced on October 8th, 2015, the band has released three singles. The first track released was Love Me, a jam about rejecting the superficiality of fame, which shocked supporters with its lack of trademark ethereal/ambient elements that were replaced by “new wave/post-punk type aspects,” such as the guitar being used in light, funky spurts instead of droning and echoing. UGH! was the second single released, which re-familiarized fans with the synth-pop brand of music they cherished so much in the first album. Crooning about his comedown from a drug high, its side effects, and his failure to quit, Matty Healy described the song as “something that goes back to the early foundation of how we write music as The 1975.” The most recent tune to drop is The Sound, which, similar to UGH!, is more akin to the upbeat, catchy tunes that were the centerpiece of the previous album. The lyrics describe how Healy has fallen so in love with a girl that he can distinguish her from others by “the sound of her heart,” metaphorically describing how he knows who she truly is on the inside.
Dubbed “the hardest working band of 2014” for playing more gigs and traveling farther than any other artist since 2010, The 1975, as of February 26th, will have been fully resurrected in the music industry. After spending 10 years working on the first album, the band has waited 13 years to get to this exact moment in its career. The 1975 has been described as electro-pop, funk rock, indie pop, indie rock, pop, pop rock, and rock; however, the band isn’t letting the possibility of change take over the second album. Before surprising the audience with some of the new songs at a show in November, Matty did his best to describe the album in saying, “There are 17 tracks. There’s no way we could delineate what it’s about, but we want to have a party.” The fans agree; it’s time to throw down.
