The 1975

“Born-ready anthems” Pitchfork“Their songs are ridiculously catchy…they’ll be heard everywhere this year.” The GuardianThe breakthrough band of the year, The 1975 will release their self-titled debut album through Dirty Hit/Polydor on September 2nd. It will be preceded by the single ‘Sex’ on August 26th. ‘The 1975’ reflects the Manchester art-pop quartet’s shape-shifting adventurousness, an album of indelible choruses and mesmeric melodies that glides from electro grooves to alt-rock explosions to dreamy interludes. Matthew Healy (vocals/guitar), Adam Hann (guitar), George Daniel (drums) and Ross MacDonald (bass) started making music together when they met at school in Wilmslow a decade ago aged 14. “Our musical vocabulary is 100% the same because we grew up listening and playing music together,” says Healy. The starting point for what became The 1975’s heady genre-meshing sound was when they realised “we could do anything we wanted.” The only restriction the four-piece gave themselves when writing the songs that make up ‘The 1975’ was that there would be no restrictions. There is an infectious vibrancy threading through the record that reflects their triumphant introduction to the world. They began drip-feeding their songs online in Spring 2012 and by the time they’d released four EPs, ‘Facedown’, ‘Sex’, ‘Music For Cars’ (featuring their first Top 20 hit ‘Chocolate’) and ‘IV’, an enraptured, rabid fanbase was quickly growing. They have taken the escalating success in their swagger; so far there have been two sold-out UK tours, support slots with Muse and The Rolling Stones, as well as a headline show announced at London’s Brixton Academy. ‘The 1975’ was recorded at the Motor Museum in Liverpool, with Arctic Monkeys collaborator Mike Crossey co-producing alongside the band’s Matthew Healy and George Daniel. A seamless meld of their kaleidoscopic range of influences, it encapsulates all that is great about pop music in 2013. It opens with a song called ‘The 1975’, a blissfully electronic introduction before the throbbing anthemic swirl of ‘The City’ kicks in. A raucous reworking of forthcoming single ‘Sex’ shows just how they’ve honed the art of combining taut, rhythmical precision with horizon-stretching sing-alongs. The 80s-style bounce of ‘Settle Down’, meanwhile, showcases their ability to make the intimate sound epic and vice versa. Throughout, the synth-pop suckerpunch of songs such as ‘Heart Out’ and ‘Girls’ is punctuated by soothing soundscapes. For a band born out of a smash and grab approach to music, their debut is a remarkably fully-formed work. Its 16 tracks ebb and flow into each other with a stunning inventiveness, all delivered with the intoxicating adrenaline of being young and free and dazed and bruised by the world. The 1975 are a band with a name that’s from the past who make music with a chameleonic, futuristic approach. It’s fitting that their debut is thrillingly and definitively the sound of the here and now.