The 1975 - The 1975

The 1975 - The 1975 (2013)

Genre: Indie Rock, Indie Pop, Electropop, Funk Rock, Pop Rock, Alternative Rock

Indie/alternative/pop-rock group The 1975, dropped their debut studio album in 2013, offering a mix electropop and funk influences with some punk-style lyrical content sprinkled in. This album is being reviewed per request. As a reminder, I do not intend for this to be a really in-depth and complex review. I'm just sharing my quick personal thoughts on the album. As for any album review I will do, I try to be objective without letting any personal bias get too much in the way of the final grade.

I can't say I expected much after hearing the title track, which features some very interesting experimentation, but for some odd reason is full of euphemisms for oral sex. I don't see the correlation, unless this band is so full of themselves that they're starting off by announcing how many girls they lay down with on the daily. In fact, there's a lots of sexually charged lyrics throughout this album, with Sex being the most "in your face" track, lyrically. Here, Matty Healy seemingly gloats how he can steal your girl, being the Casanova that he aspires to be. I can't deny though, that it's probably their catchiest song on this record.

There's a lot of genres mixed in here, but there still seems to be a mostly consistent type of song structure throughout. Almost all tracks have a very prominent synth-pop vibe, but the production here is decent enough that the synths never blow up more than they need to. A very prominent use of synthesizers is on the track Menswear, which plays out like a chill, lo-fi hip-hop musical background for half of the song's length. I almost expected Matty to come in with some bomb-ass bars, but he didn't. *tear*

While there are no shortage of decent tracks on this album, there never was a single track that stood out above all the rest to such a great extent. As I stated, Sex was probably the catchiest here, and aside from that, only Chocolate and Talk! made we want to get up and dance a bit. The latter features a simple and subtle, but effectively funky bassline that kept my ears occupied. M.O.N.E.Y. is a song which I didn't necessarily love, but did feature some interesting use effects and electronic vocal alterations. I have yet to understood how silly, yet intriguing it is to hear Matty spell out "money" after his voice has been transformed into an annoying little robot.

Because of the overreliance on common pop-tropes and synths, the album does start to stumble a bit with the second half. The best track from the second half would probably have to be Girls, with its upbeat, simple chord riff. Again, nothing on here ever lives up to the fun nature of Sex, but there's no shortage of simple, funky tunes either. The album ends with a sultry, yet minimalistic piano ballad, Is There Somebody Who Can Watch You, which seems drastically different within the context of this album. Overall, their first album was a decent effort in incorporating funk and synth-pop into more traditional alt-rock and pop rock, while unironically leaving in some room for some youth-driven care-free type of songwriting. There's quite some room for improvement, both sonically and lyrically, but for what it is, there's definitely some enjoyment to be had here.

B-

Favorite Tracks: Chocolate, Sex, Talk!, Girls, The City, She Way Out

Least Favorite Track: 12 (Yes, I'm counting the minimalist interludes)