Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

The 1975: A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships

Much of their new album washes over you like a cheap shower gel

issue 01 December 2018

Grade: C

A derided year in pop music, 1975 — and yet a great one. The mainstream was horrible, but we had Neil Young’s Tonight’s The Night, Patti Smith’s Horses, Guy Clarke’s Old No. 1 and Television just beginning to break through. It is in the lacunae, before the next big wave, that we hear the most inventive music, which is why ’75 — with Queen and disco hogging the charts and the blind alleys of prog and metal as your only alternative — was so good. But I suppose you want to hear about the band, The 1975 — one of Britain’s biggest.

Oh, Britain. The 1975 are a bunch of middle-class Mancs led by a gobby SJW junkie — hell, what’s not to like. Their last album, which sounded like a conference call between Duran Duran and Prefab Sprout, was entitled: I Like It When You Sleep, for You Are So Beautiful yet So Unaware (yes, of course she’s unaware, she’s asleep, you sinister dickweed).

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