THE 1975 – one of the most awarded present-day British bands at Pohoda 2019
The 1975, the winners of Brit Awards for the best British band and the NME Awards for the Best Live band will play at Pohoda 2019. They have never been short of fans, as evidenced by the fact that each of their albums reached top sales in the British chart. Initially, however, they struggled to find their way to music critics. Rolling Stone gave their first album two stars out of five, and NME awarded them a prize for the worst band. As for the second album, both of the aforementioned media ranked it first in their year-ending charts. NME even marked their latest “A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships” as OK Computer for the millennials and gave it a 10/10 review. It was also granted approval of The Daily Telegraph, The Times, Skinny, DIY and The Q, and it also got into Best New Music category of the Pitchfork magazine. The 1975 will come to convince the Slovak fans of their qualities the first day of Pohoda.
14. December 2018
The 1975 was founded in Manchester by four schoolmates – the guitarist Matthew "Matty" Healy, guitarist Adam Hann, bass player Ross MacDonald, and drummer George Daniel in Manchester. It took them almost a decade to get from the first meeting to the first single, but then it was a rocket start from an unknown band to the British indie pop stars. Their first Eps – Facedown, Sex, Music for Cars, and IV, were put on the map by the BBC moderators Huw Stephens and Zane Lowe. According to AllMusic, they combine youthful topics of sex with dark flavour, love and fear with ethereal alt-rock music. The Guardian compares them to the 80s stars such as Duran Duran and INXS. Before releasing their debut album, they supported Muse, the Neighbourhood, or Rolling Stones. Still, it came across as a surprise when their eponymous debut The 1975 became the number one in the UK Albums Chart. It was produced by Mike Crossey, who collaborated with Arctic Monkeys and Foals. However, fans' excellent responses did not meet with similar recognition from among critics. NME even gave them an award for the worst band.
Their second album I Like It When You Sleep, You Are So Beautiful, Still Unaware of It also earned exceptional success. In addition to fans, it was also appreciated by the media and experts. The album became the number one in the UK and the USA and was nominated for the Mercury Prize. According to NME, it was even the best album of the year and the number one of its genre according Rolling Stone and The Meneater. Billboard, PopMatters, Drowned In Sound and Digital Spy also included it in their TOP3. It became the bestselling album in Britain and the USA. In 2016 they received the BBC Music Awards for the Live Lounge Performance of the Year and in 2017 they added the prestigious Brit Awards for the best British band to their collection, while competing against Radiohead, Biffy Clyro and Bastille who were also nominated. In the same year they became the most nominated band at the NME Awards and won the Best Live Band award leaving Bastille, Wolf Alice, Bring Me The Horizon and Slaves behind themselves.
Despite the success of the second album, the latest A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships is a career and artistic leap in their work. The release was preceded by long teasing called Music for Cars. Prior to the recording itself, the heroine-addicted frontman underwent a rehab in Barbados. The album about human and artistic growing up suddenly turned into a generational work, the title of which correlates with the content very well. The NME called it OK Computer for the millennials. According to Q magazine, it is not only fun and moving, but also extremely necessary. DIY adds that the band has rose its colours of the most fascinating musical voice we have, creating a bombastic, flawlessly made portrait of the modern life. The album continued in the traditional conquest of the UK charts while reaching the fourth place in the US. The album is exclusively produced by the singer Matty Heally and the drummer George Daniel. Tracks, however, sound as if they were produced by 15 different people – you’ll find dance-electro-indie-pop songs more typical for them, such as "Give Yourself a Try" and "It's Not Living (If It's Not With You)", then neo-jazz "Sincerity Is Scary" or intimate songs "Be my mistake" and "I Always Wanna Die (Sometimes)".
This work is perfectly summed up-emphasized in the conclusion of Dan Stubbs' interview with Matty Healy for NME: "The first three albums were to be the story of his teenage years: the debut is about him as a dreaming youngster in Manchester, the second is about experiencing success and in the newest one he is to be mature. But they’ve gone one bigger. They’ve put together an album that doesn’t just sum Matty up, it seems to sum up the human condition as such. Who’d have thought?” By the end of May 2019, they are releasing its sequel in the form of the fourth album called Notes on a Conditional Form. We are very pleased that The 1975 will present this important generation album and its follower at the Trenčín airport.