Hello, everyone. I hope you’re all staying safe and healthy during these uncertain times. Today, we’ll be looking at the highly anticipated fourth album from arguably the most successful indie rock band to emerge in the last decade. The 1975 exploded onto the scene with their instantly beloved self-titled debut album in 2013, and then cemented themselves as the Radiohead of the millennial generation with their sophomore record, I Like It When You Sleep, for You Are So Beautiful yet So Unaware of It. With their 2018 album, A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships, the band took their sound in a more mainstream pop direction, alienating some fans, but drawing praise from others (personally, I wasn’t a fan of the album). So where do we find The 1975 in 2020, with Notes on a Conditional Form?
With this album, the band pretty much picks up right where they left off with A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships. With few exceptions, we get more of the same bland, uninspired attempts to ride the success wave of millennial pop “rock.” If you’re like me, and the band’s previous release saw them imagining a few too many dragons for your taste, chances are you won’t like this one very much better. So is Notes on a Conditional Form just a rehashing of that album?
I wish.
For one thing, this album is extremely bloated, even for The 1975. And I know this opinion may not make me many friends, but I’ve never felt like this band’s albums, even the good ones, have justified their entire runtimes. So you can imagine how I reacted when I learned that this album contains 22 songs, and clocks in at an hour and 20 minutes. The only thing that could make this worse is if the album were chalked full of plodding piano ballads. And guess what? It is! So needless to say, this album absolutely drags. But before I get too deep into describing what a miserable experience the majority of this album is, let’s talk about those few exceptions I mentioned earlier.
The album’s lead single, “People,” is a raw, chaotic, garage rock tune, pulled straight from The Strokes’ playbook. As far as the songs on Notes on a Conditional Form go, this one is pretty fun, though maybe not the band’s most original offering. And between it being the lead single, and the second song on the tracklist, it paints a pretty misleading picture of just where the album is going. We also hear some upbeat, summery new wave love songs in “Then Because She Goes,” “Me & You Together Song,” and “If You’re Too Shy (Let Me Know).” The album is peppered with orchestral instruments, such as horns, strings, and saxophones throughout, but at no point are these instruments ever really brought to the forefront. With the exception of “People,” even the guitars, bass, and drums take a backseat to the keys and electronics for the most part.
The four songs I previously mentioned are all we really get to break up the down-tempo monotony of the other 18, most of which are forgettable at best. At worst, we hear The 1975 at their most gutless and manufactured on tracks such as “Nothing Revealed / Everything Denied” and “What Should I Say,” complete with all the vocal filtration and electronic instrumentals you could ever imagine. And as if the album weren’t already pointlessly long enough, we also get instrumental tracks such as “The End (Music for Cars),” “Streaming,” and “Having No Head,” which all just sound like a couple of people dicking around on a piano and a sound effects machine, and in the case of “Having No Head,” go on for way too long. We also get short, sporadic songs, such as “Yeah I Know,” and “Shiny Collarbone,” which may as well be instrumental tracks, as their vocal lines lack phrasing and melody, and their lyrics lack any sense of cohesion. Bottom line, much of this album’s colossal runtime is a complete waste of your time.
Lyrically, there really isn’t much to talk about here. Many of these songs simply consist of Matthew Healy graphically bragging about his sexcapades, thinly veiled as earnest love songs. Unfortunately, this issue is the most glaring in some of the more musically enjoyable moments I mentioned earlier. “People” is a notable exception, as Healy shouts of anger and political unrest, but ultimately offers no original observations, and comes off as rather vague. Seeing as this album opens with a five-minute speech from Greta Thunberg, one might hope for a more purposeful and topical record than the one we got. The most lyrically redeeming moments are the final two tracks, “Don’t Worry,” a beautiful song of affirmation to a loved one, and “Guys,” an endearing message of love to Healy’s bandmates. Although due to the lush, down-tempo nature of these songs, by the end of the album, the listener could be forgiven for missing them entirely.
So, it seems that The 1975 have created an hour and 20-minute album, solely for the purpose of making an hour and 20-minute album. With Notes on a Conditional Form, the band have achieved a new level of bloat, and frankly, a new level of wankery. The overblown delivery of this album truly makes it feel as though the band believe they have created their magnum opus. Unfortunately, if the band was trying to create something in the vein of The Beatles’ White Album or Pink Floyd’s The Wall, they failed miserably. If Pete Townshend, Dennis DeYoung, and Liam Gallagher teamed up, I don’t believe even they could create an album as far up its own ass as this one. Aside from a few decent tunes scattered throughout the record, Notes on a Conditional Form is nearly an hour and a half of your life that you’ll never get back.
Score: 2/10
Favorite Song(s): Guys
Least Favorite Song(s): Nothing Revealed / Everything Denied, Having No Head, Yeah I Know, Shiny Collarbone, Bagsy Not in Net
Phil Klinker Music Reviews 