This week I'm reviewing one of my favourite albums of modern times, if not of all time, by my favourite modern band. I've been listening to I like it when you sleep, for you are so beautiful yet so unaware of it by The 1975 on vinyl from their Grammy-winning box set, for maximum pretentiousness, although I picked up one of the last copies of it when they reduced them to £19.75 on their online store.
1. The 1975 💚
I like it when you sleep... is The 1975's second album, released in 2016, and it opens with a call back to their debut with a new version of the first album's opening track. It's a bigger version with a choir backing Matty Healy and it sets the scene for what's to come, even if the lyrics are just an artsy description of oral sex. It's not really a 'song' so much as in intro piece which is why it doesn't rate more highly.
2. Love Me 💜
The intro to this song is like being punched in the face by someone with a handful of glitter. It's The 1975 at their most glamorous and it's inextricably linked to the neon pink lighting that accompanies this song in their live show and the bright sparkly rockstar excess of its music video. My intro to The 1975 is kind of complicated as I can pinpoint three or four different moments where I fell in love with the idea of them before actually committing to a relationship with the band, and the release of Love Me when I was new to Spotify and still paying attention to their New Music playlist is one of those moments. The music is so rich with little guitar parts and synth moments, and it references both modern and classic pop culture - it sounds like Fame-era Bowie, INXS and all of the most exciting androgynous, leather trouser wearing glam rock of the past few decades. That's balanced with lyrics that drop the Kardashians, internet culture and newfound celebrity in the 21st century. It's sleazy but not in the usual misogynistic way - it manages to be sarcastic and ironic but also somehow serious. I love hearing it live and I love hearing it at the start of this album. The perfect statement of intent for a collection of songs which combines retro sounds with modern day ironic commentary.
3. UGH! 🎀
This song is 3 minutes of perfection and definitely one of my top 5 favourite songs by The 1975. I've lived with this album for almost 5 years now and there are a lot of songs on here that I would have given a higher rating if I hadn't played it to death, but UGH! is one of those songs that I never tire of hearing. It's funky like a Prince song and infinitely catchy with its fast paced lyrics about drug addiction and narcissism (there's a lot of drug addiction and narcissism coming up). It's devastating that it's no longer in their live set.
The first ballad on the album. The lyric sheet for this song is thick with references to the classics, the current and even The 1975's back catalogue. It's this cleverness that puts some people off but I love it. Matty 'quotes On The Road' while also shrugging off his relationship as being mostly an interest in his girlfriend's breasts. He complains about Instagram ("your eyes were full of regret, and then you took a picture of your salad and put it on the internet") and then quotes his first album ("I never found love in the city", "this is how it starts"). It's got self-deprecation ("you look shit and you smell a bit") and Britishisms ("you were fit but you're losing it"). Where you expect a big 80s chorus, you get a weird bendy synth part which I adore. One criticism I have for A Change Of Heart is that it's all on one level - it sticks to the same languid pace throughout and kind of plods along, which works for the song (it's like dragging out the end of a relationship you're trying to cut off) but sometimes I'm not in the mood for it. It's the first outing for what I call 'soft Matty' where he croons in a more fragile voice to the one he used when telling people to love him a couple of songs ago. A Change Of Heart is a very sweet and very realistic break-up song.
5. She's American 🟦
This opens with a great 80s-sounding riff and I love the guitar sound on this song. There's more drug references in here - so far that's one in every song but he does ease off a bit later. It's hard to say whether this song has pro- or anti-America stance with its references to guns and the attitude of the American girl he's seeing. The exploration of America is new for this album but is carried on through I Like America and America Likes Me on the next album. Despite this change in perspective from the small local world of the first album to the international life of this song, we're reminded that Matty is an uncomfortable English outsider in his new environment with phrases like "proper weird" and some eye-rolling on the 'we're so intelligent' in the chorus.
6. If I Believe You 🕌
Side B of the record and The 1975 are taking us to church. The organ intro collapses into a more expected synth part but this song is very black-influenced with a gospel choir enlisted to help Matty ask what it would be like to believe in a god. We get soft Matty again here but this time it's not a break-up that's making him fragile. The moment where he says he 'had a revelation' (brought on by drugs rather than religious enlightenment) works great in a live setting when he throws his arms up like a televangelist and the switch between long and short notes in the chorus is very effective too. There's a break for a horn solo which, combined with the waltz beat, is a different sound for the band but it works - this is the first really boundary-pushing experiment in genre of the album but it won't be the last. The outro may be a little too long but I'll allow it.
7. Please Be Naked 🚙
This instrumental track opens with the sound of traffic and builds up only to fade back out for the piano to take centre stage. It's very soothing and pretty and, like the last track, an unexpected piece of music. The bass drum comes in with a boom that reminds me of the train at the end of Kate Bush's Cloudbusting and there's some nice glockenspiel/music box that comes in nearer the end which is gorgeous. This song is the start of the 'random background twinkling' that they use a lot now in their music, especially in the more ambient/instrumental stuff but it's restrained here and sounds like part of the song rather than the band recording in a room where an orchestra is tuning up. I saw the band perform this with a symphony orchestra which was the ideal treatment of it, as it was too chill for a normal concert. The close-down of the song by dropping back to just piano carefully drops you back out of the dream and into the album.
8. Lostmyhead 💙
We've had gospel and ambient, now it's shoegazing time! The 1975 are so many different bands on this side of vinyl, never mind across their album or back catalogue. Lostmyhead is mostly instrumental with just a couple of lines lifted from an earlier song, Facedown, as if providing us with a sequel. I love the distorted strummed chords which lay a foundation for the soaring strings and guitar parts that sit on top. It's reflective and warm and when the guitar solo cuts through the noise it's like the sun bursting through the clouds. It's a revelatory experience seeing this song live with George pounding the drumkit and Matty up on a podium sawing at his guitar which is slung so low it's covering his knees. At the end everything fades back into the distorted noise and sounds like pulling the plug on a storm and listening to the muddy water disappearing down the drain.
9. The Ballad Of Me And My Brain 🧠
We open with a sampled choir sound that is so weird and discordant, then a bass synth sound that feels like a vibration coming through the floor rather than a sound. This is another of my all-time favourite songs. The delivery is urgent as Matty frantically searches for his missing brain, and in the panic he still manages to be very British ("it's likely in a Sainsburys"), millennial ("Oops I Did It Again started playing") and self-deprecating ("would you sign an autograph for my daughter Laura? Cos she adores you... I think you're shit"). The 1975 performed this the first time I saw them and it was one of my favourite moments of the set - the lights covered the stage like a purple curtain that slowly opened out into the crowd and revealed Matty thrashing about and yelling the lyrics like it was a panic attack. This song is another perfect few minutes.
10. Somebody Else 🔵
Soft sad break-up Matty returns; before the brink-of-tears vocals even start you can tell we're in for heartbreak by those 90s ballad piano chords. This song became the mainstream favourite from the album for some reason and maybe that's why I haven't rated it higher. It has all the hallmarks of classic 1975 - there's a synth riff, there's lyrics putting himself down and referencing modernity, and it's set to a pounding dance beat. A Change Of Heart is him leaving her; Somebody Else is him begging her not to leave him. He knows it's over, still he clings. I don't love the vocal effect on the 'get someone you love? Get someone you need?" bit but there always seems to be one on every album so I can live with it. The 'fuck that get money' response to that line has never fitted the song for me, but I guess it's a comment on choosing career over relationships - tied to the first verse line "I took all my things that make sounds, the rest I can do without". It's a devastating break-up song about jealousy and desperation and loss.
11. Loving Someone 🟣
I'm going to start with my complaint about this song, which isn't so much about the song but more about its afterlife. There is one line in here that alludes to sexuality ("it's better if we make them want the opposite sex") but somehow after putting the album out the band decided to make it a gay anthem with a rainbow flag lighting scheme and 7" sleeve. They claim it was the fans who adopted it as such, but I don't remember that being particularly widespread at the time. It's actually a great song that's full of information about the political climate of 2015-16 (pre-Brexit and pre-Trump) - there's lyrics about immigration ("if it was safer on the ground they wouldn't be on a boat") and a reference to the Greek economy which make it feel like a draft version of Love It If We Made It, the political song on the next album that won a lot of Song Of The Year accolades. It's full of smart language and references - Matty could talk about chavs but instead he goes for "disenfranchised young criminal minds in the car park besides where your nan resides". He also drops a too-clever line about Guy Debord's Society Of The Spectacle which is a lot for a band who were until this point regarded as a slightly-more-edgy One Direction.
12. I Like It When You Sleep, For You Are So Beautiful Yet So Unaware Of It 💚
This is The 1975 being allowed to make a proper piece of ambient music for the first time but not the last. A song like this, which is a 2-part mostly-instrumental work, was a surprise when the album came out. It's very different to the big pop hits on the album but somehow it still fits, maybe because there's so much experimentation going on here. The switch from the more relaxed first half of the song to the beat dropping is a great moment on the album, same with the moment when the vocal samples come in. I love the way it builds up but haven't quite worked out the perfect setting for the song - the first half is a nice relaxing piece for winding down and then the second part is exciting and is likely inspired by the late-night garage dance music you'd hear on the radio in the 2000s when driving in the city. It ends kind of how it started with a sort of bleepy, almost ringtone sounding, synthesised piano sound, leaving the way it came in to make way for another big pop song.
This is The 1975 being allowed to make a proper piece of ambient music for the first time but not the last. A song like this, which is a 2-part mostly-instrumental work, was a surprise when the album came out. It's very different to the big pop hits on the album but somehow it still fits, maybe because there's so much experimentation going on here. The switch from the more relaxed first half of the song to the beat dropping is a great moment on the album, same with the moment when the vocal samples come in. I love the way it builds up but haven't quite worked out the perfect setting for the song - the first half is a nice relaxing piece for winding down and then the second part is exciting and is likely inspired by the late-night garage dance music you'd hear on the radio in the 2000s when driving in the city. It ends kind of how it started with a sort of bleepy, almost ringtone sounding, synthesised piano sound, leaving the way it came in to make way for another big pop song.
13. The Sound 🔂
A proper pop song except you don't usually hear lines like "sycophantic, prophetic, Socratic junkie wannabe... simple Epicurean philosophy" in pop songs. It sounds like it should be on Radio 1 but in a good way and it makes sense as the encore closing song that it has been since it was released. It fits in well with 2016's pop music which had bands like Years & Years reaching for a 90s post-acid house sound. Like Love Me, it's great to dance to and features a real guitar solo, but it doesn't stand up quite as well to the over-exposure it's had over the years as a live set mainstay and radio favourite.
14. This Must Be My Dream 🌃
This is the most underrated song on the album - aside from the last 2 songs which I'll come to in a moment, this is the only one I haven't seen the band play live. It's dripping in 80s musical references - there's a sax solo! - and lyrics which you could apply to that era as well as our current decade ("I personify the adolescent on a phone"). It's another song about choosing your rock'n'roll career over your relationship and sounds like the fight that precedes the bargaining phase of the split chronicled in Somebody Else. Can anybody else visualise it appearing in the jukebox musical based on The 1975 that I hope someday gets written?
15. Paris 💜
This song has a real 'sad ending' vibe to it, like a wave goodbye to the album. There's more drugs references in abundance here as the lyrics paint a picture of a messy relationship that was doomed from the start, a sort of drugged up shopping list of neuroses and quotations. Paris was one of my favourite songs but I've gotten a bit fed up of it in the live set, however hearing it today reminded me of why I love it - it's faster on record than I remember it being live. We get soft Matty again but this time it doesn't feel like he's giving us self-hatred, instead he's laying out his case and allowing us to feel sorry for him whether he's aware of his hopeless situation or not.
16. Nana 🟩
The last two songs on the album stand in stark contrast to what's come before. This song is very simple - we get acoustic guitar and lyrics telling a story with straightforward rhymes, bereft of the usual clever references and purple prose. It's just Matty in a one-sided conversation with his departed nana - "I don't like it now you're dead". His voice breaks while singing the final line, "I think you can tell, I haven't been doing too well" which breaks my heart and sums up not only his grief, but the album as a whole. With that one line he tears down the ironic, self-deprecating, constantly-referential façade and has another revelation, this time not brought on by drugs or religion, just truth.
17. She Lays Down 🟩
Much like Nana, this is straightforward in its delivery, but She Lays Down is even more stripped back and minimal. It sounds like just Matty, in a room by himself, playing his guitar and singing and just recorded like that. It's even more personal and sad - if you thought a song about the death of Matty's grandmother was heart-wrenching, here's one about his mother's post-natal depression. These two personal, raw songs make for a strange ending after the hour of 80s synth and ironic brightness of the rest of the album, and to be honest I sometimes leave this side off the turntable if I'm playing the album just because they're such a comedown.
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