by The Cowl Editor on January 17, 2019
Arts & Entertainment
by: Brigid Walshe ’19 A&E Staff
After months and months of anticipation (including a 30-day countdown on their Instagram page), British alternative/indie rock group The 1975 finally released their highly anticipated new album, A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships, in November, 2018. The band is known for their hits, “Chocolate,” “Girls,” “Somebody Else,” and “The Sound,” from their first two albums. A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships will be their first album since 2016, when they released their number one album I like it when you sleep for you are so beautiful yet so unaware of it.
This new era for the band, which the band is now calling Music for Cars, is inspired by frontman Matty Healy’s teenage years, which he spent mostly in cars, listening to music. Therefore, the new album offers an “unfiltered, genre-crossing look at cultural consumption,” according to Entertainment Weekly. This album focuses on how easy it is to lose oneself in an online world that slowly merges with reality. The band released their first single off the album, “Give Yourself a Try,” on May 31, 2018, and since that date, has released four more singles from the album, “TOOTIMETOOTIMETOOTIME,” “Love It If We Made It,” and “Sincerity is Scary,” and “It’s Not Living (If It’s Not With You)” at later dates. The album contains 15 songs in total, including the five singles released prior.
One thing that fans love about The 1975 is how original their music and art is, and that has definitely not changed with this album. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Healy said that he is not worried about outdoing the band’s past success, but rather focused on the band’s authenticity. The band makes art not for the profit, but for the sake of making art. They are not worried about what anyone else says about their music except themselves.
Healy described his songwriting method as, “deconstructed, anthological, and postmodern” in a recent interview with Pitchfork. Healy has drawn inspiration from all sorts of genres, from John Hughes movies to jazz artist John Coltrane, for this upcoming album, as well as from his experiences from his childhood up to his release from rehab before the new album was released.
The album was released on November 30, 2018, and for fans already wanting more music, the band is planning for a follow-up album, called Notes on a Conditional Form, to be released at some point in May 2019. They are also touring all over the world with the release of A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships, with the closest stop being Agganis Arena at Boston University on May 30. If the rest of The 1975’s projects are this impressive, the era of Music for Cars will hold a lot of surprises for fans.