A Brief Inquiry is the sound of millennials holding a mirror up to millennials, as Matt Healy's songwriting defiantly seeks to avoid crumbling under the weight of their collective anxieties. In the age of Brexit, Trump, and virulent tribalism, the record is an antidote that encourages you to give yourself a try, give us a try.
The record has everything. There are buzzy emo anthems ("Give Yourself a Try"), bouncy trop-pop affairs ("TOOTIME"), UK garage workouts ("How To Draw / Petrichor"), arena synth-rockers ("Love It If We Made It"), acoustic love ballads ("Be My Mistake"), jazz-fusion trips ("Sincerity is Scary"), auto-tuned torch jams ("I Like America & America Likes Me"), and '90s R&B joints ("I Couldn't Be More In Love"). Healy and his mates range across genres and find thrilling inspiration in making them their own, timely and accessible. Had The 1975 chosen just any one of these paths, the band would have made a fantastic record, which is truly remarkable.
Much has been made of Healy quoting Kanye and Trump in "Love It If We Made It" or disclosing his past battles with drugs in "It's Not Living (If It's Not With You)." While his writing is vulnerable and prescient, the record is more than Healy's private demons or a topical run through headline swipes. It is ridiculously fun and enjoyable, a heady rush of uplifting melodies and in-the-pocket grooves. "I'm making pop records," Healy said. "When I say we're a pop band, what I'm really saying is we're not a rock band. Please stop calling us a rock band--cause I think that's the only music we don't make."
The pop eclecticism is exhilarating. It is clear the band is in love with a wide range of influences, unafraid to tackle them with their considerable artistic gifts. "How to Draw / Petrichor" is "the sound of being young," a homage to the late-night dance records Healy consumed as a kid while listening to the radio at home. "Love It If We Made It" was influenced by "killing The Blue Nile's Hats before we went on stage, listening to that record until it broke." Stuffed with lines from Kanye, Trump, and the tabloids, the track is the best arena-rock song of the year, deftly chronicling the can-you-believe-it madness of our day.
"Be My Mistake" channels Nick Drake as Healy goes full-out singer-songwriter. "Sincerity is Scary," a subtle screed against social media, is avante-garde jazz in the vein of Chance the Rapper. The superb track features jazz player Roy Hargrove, who laid down the brass section for D'Angelo's Voodoo, and "the greatest musician I've ever been in a room with by a mile," according to Healy. "I Like America & America Likes Me" apes Bon Iver's auto-tuned synth to glorious, nocturnal realms. "It's the sound of America to me at the moment," Healy said. "I was almost going to put it out with just mumble lyrics, to see how far I could take it."
"Mine" is a classic jazz standard inspired by the band's love of Coltrane. "Surrounded by Heads and Bodies," a sharp retelling of Healy's time in rehab, lifts its title from the opening lines of David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest, which Healy read because it was opened to its first page, "as most copies of Infinite Jest are." "I Always Wanna Die Sometimes" employs strings by David Campbell, the same guy who glossed them all over the Goo Goo Dolls' "Iris." Healy hoped the cinematic closer might be the band's "I Don't Want to Miss A Thing," which is sort of awesome to admit.
Undoubtedly, The 1975's record is the sound of 2018. Hugely entertaining, ambitious, maximalist, dizzying, sincere, the record leaves it all out there, haters be damned.
No comments:
Post a Comment