Cover feature The 1975: Resistance Is Futile
They’re one of the biggest bands in the world, about to launch one of the most anticipated album campaigns of the year. And this is their first interview about it. Welcome to the new era of The 1975.
Right now, there are approximately 3,000 posters pasted around London, advertising an album that doesn’t exist yet. If you’ve not seen them there, then you will have seen them in your city, or on Instagram, or Facebook. They’re cryptic things, filled with Black Mirror-esque dystopian jokes about a future that’s actually just kind of the present: a toddler in a VR headset emblazoned with the phrase ‘MODERNITY HAS FAILED US’. A group of people on their phones at an art gallery, with a link to the Bible passage of Isaiah 6:9-10 (sample quote: ‘Make these people calloused; make their ears dull and close their eyes’). A plain black poster with a dense mass of text filled with dry, darkly humorous observations on the modern, “more distracted world”.
It’s the seven other characters printed in the top left that people really care about though. And that’s why we’re sat with the figurehead at the centre of it all, to start to unpick the hungrily-awaited new era of The 1975: an era centred around an album that’s still “nowhere near done”. It’d be an insane stunt, were it not so ridiculously them. “It’s just part of the way that we do things, so to complain or to celebrate seems a bit pointless. We’re gonna do it. We always do it,” shrugs Matty Healy. “It’s a trip, man. The most amount of posters around London are our posters. There’s one in London Bridge and I went past it in an Uber and thought, ‘that’s me. And that’s advertising an album that I haven’t finished. What am I doing!?’”
Pressure, it seems, has never really been a factor for the quartet (completed by guitarist Adam Hann, bassist Ross MacDonald and drummer George Daniel). Last year, during their Latitude headline set, Matty consistently peppered between-song breaks with repetitions of “The first of June, The 1975” - a nod to their name origin story, but also seemingly a suggestion of a forthcoming release date. The following day they posted a flickering video to Instagram showing the neon signage of second album ‘I like it when you sleep for you are so beautiful yet so unaware of it’ being turned off and replaced by a new phrase, ‘Music For Cars 2018’. Earlier that year, Matty had told Beats 1’s Zane Lowe that the name – previously the title of an early 2013 EP – would be the title of their next record.
Before they’d even begun recording, the band had put all the cornerstones not only in place, but out in the public eye, ready to be discussed and dissected. It’s an intense way of working, and one that could cripple a lot of people. “I think we always put a bit of pressure on ourselves because we thrive off excitement. The indie mentality is that the more excited people get, the less they care. Fuck that!” he grins. “The more excited people get, the more we care. If you don’t care, why the fuck should [anyone else] care?!” Safe to say, the singer is not in that camp.
It also doesn’t really matter anymore, because now almost all of that early information has changed at least partially anyway.
