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The 1975 - Notes On A Conditional Form (Track by Track Review)

I've reviewed the album as a whole but, given the diversity and variety of the tracklist, I thought it would be a great idea to show my opinions on each individual track. I went through a lot of pain in doing this, after all, the album is one hour and twenty minutes long, and there are a total of 22 tracks. Of course I'd recommend reading the main review first then coming back to this, but do whatever you want. There isn't really much to preface this post with, as everything is pretty self explanatory. I hope you enjoy, so without further ado - let's get into the review! Reviews. Technically speaking.

The 1975
A five minute atmospheric but substanceless instrumental featuring a speech from Greta Thunberg on climate change. On an album that doesn't have anything to do with climate change. I mean I agree with most of what she's saying, but it has the typical Greta problem of being all accusatory without offering a real solution other than to be motivated and to protest...which is fine, but without any solutions it's kind of just your average "ain't my fault" ramble without much of a point. For context, I'm younger than Greta Thunberg by a few months and I find her both hugely inspirational and shockingly hollow.
1/10

People
This song stands out as pretty much the only rock track on here, and it does an unquestionably fantastic job at emulating the hardcore punk sound it's going for. The problems come in the framing when it's in the context of the album, see, the last thing Greta says in her speech is "it's time to rebel", a moment that becomes pretty awesome when a second later you're greeted by the pounding drums and blasting punk riffs of "People". Except, as much as "People" might sound like a protest song, it's pretty substanceless in some key ways given that the lyrics are all to do with feelings of isolation from society, cheap pleasure through drugs and older generations being dismissive of younger ones. Basically, it's a song from the perspective of a millenial who's pointing out how much the older generations point to younger ones as society's problems...whilst giving them a tonne of reasons why that might be a legitimate concern. Pair that with the intro track with Greta Thunberg being all about blaming the older generations it comes across as excruciatingly shallow and more than a little hypocritical. I can still enjoy this song as its own thing, but within the album all it does as serve as a reminder of why self-ascribed activists such as The 1975 and Greta are all too often no better than the generations that came before them.
4/10*

The End (Music For Cars)
Yawn. The first of too many instrumental interludes, a reasonably cinematic piece that has nothing to do with anything and is just here to fill up space and time.
4/10

Frail State Of Mind
This is just "TOOTIMETOOTIMETOOTIME" with less annoying lyrics and a slightly tweaked beat. And weirdly, I'm quite pleased it is. Where that song was all overcompressed over-polished and embarrassingly shallow, this is actually a fun slice of UK garage music that more than compensates for the utter faceplant that "TOOTIME" was. Yeah, count me in on this one, even if it is a little basic.
7/10

Streaming
Another orchestral interlude, this soon after the last one? I'm sorry but this has got to be the most forgettable piece of pretty ambience I've ever heard, a whole minute and a half of nothing. Wasn't this branded as the band's most personal album? What's personal about a song that says or does nothing? Elevator music would be embarrassed by this for goodness sake...
1/10

The Birthday Party
I am both fully on board with and perplexed by the hate train that this song's got, the backlash coming predominantly from the controversy surrounding a line that references the band Pinegrove and look, I don't want to get into that discussion, particularly not in a review like this where I'm going to be spending most of my time here in the individual songs section, so just understand that my opinions on this track are entirely separate from that controversy. With that said, this is a really bad attempt at a warning against taking drugs, complete with some horrifically nasal pitch shifted vocals and places where Matty's vocal melodies deviate pretty painfully from the groove of the instrumental. Now, personally I'm a fan of the atmospheric-tinged country instrumental at least on a purely sonic level, but it doesn't work for this album or for the band and I wish they'd just left this one off the tracklist.
3/10

Yeah I Know
Ever since the band's sophomore record, they've played around with techno influenced instrumentals, to a surprising degree of success on some occasions. Unfortunately, the success they have with this style has definitely degraded over time and we've gone from a track that's intriguing and tense as "Please Be Naked" to this claustrophobic mix of bland electronics and a laughable vocal refrain. It feels all too repetitive and, quite frankly, is just another song that should have been left off this album.
0/10

Then Because She Goes
Well this through me for a loop. "Then Because She Goes" is a callback to the britpop of the nineties in a pretty enjoyable way... until it isn't. That is, for the most part this plays really well as a sequel of sorts to the band's last album's closing track "I Always Wanna Die (Sometimes)", boasting a genuinely enjoyable if meandering instrumental and some sweet vocals. What goes wrong you ask? *sighs*
Yeah, someone had the great idea to throw a layer of unnecessary autotune over the backing vocals, which creates a pretty jarring gap between the very warm, organic sounds of the instrumental and then the ugly whirring of the processed vocals.
6/10

Jesus Christ 2005 God Bless America
Finally! One of the best songs on the album, and one that functions as a brilliant showcasing of how intelligent the band's writing can be. On "Jesus Christ", Matty Healy and featured guest Phoebe Bridgers offer a view of what it's like to be caught between religion and their queer identity, the inclusion of 2005 in the song's title offering more substance given the difference in queer acceptance between then and now. The song explores in pretty emotional detail the struggle to know whether to accept the traditional Christian view of being against homosexual relationships, thus ignoring a key part of yourself in favor of a religion you believe is saving you, or the alternate path of accepting yourself in a world that largely positions itself as an opposition where even those in your own religion will disown you just for being queer. This song is the emotional centre of this album and is right up there with band's best work; let's hope they can keep more songs with this quality coming.
9/10

Roadkill
Spoiler alert: The brief peak in quality started and ended with "Jesus Christ". I mean, this isn't a bad song in any capacity, in fact it has a pretty strong melody and offers a surprisingly compelling groove, something severely lacking from almost every other song on this album. No, the problems come in the form of, once again, Matty Healy's lyrics and vocals. Who'd have guessed?! The narrative here is about as jumbled and confusing as this band gets, ultimately saying very little. It's trying way too hard to be funny, lacking any of the band's genuinely amusing quips from earlier releases in favour of lyrics that just go all out on explicit topics in what seems to me like a desperate bid for attention on a song that deserves very little. And to think, I used to like Matty Healy...
4/10

Me & You Together Song
The nineties are a great new fit for The 1975, a band who've spent the majority of their career taking from 80s synthpop and jazz. Ever since the aforementioned album closer "I Always Wanna Die" though, it seems they've followed in Bruno Mars's footsteps and progressed to the next decade with a heavy focus on garage, two-step, country pop and britpop, the latter of which is this track's main influence. Surprisingly enough, this is another one of the album's best tracks. It's fast-paced, catchy guitar melodies make for a pleasant enough listen and the story the song tells is about as sentimental as this album gets, replacing "Jesus Christ 2005 God Bless America"'s intriguing perspective with a bunch of lyrical quirks that makes this a fun song.
9/10

I Think There's Something You Should Know
What is it with these unnecessarily long song titles? I mean it's something the band have indulged in pretty frequently for a while now and this is far from the most pretentious album, but it just looks messy and unfinished, much like this song. It's another one of those garage-y two-step beats, this one actually featuring some of Healy's vocals in a reasonably normal melody. On top of this, there's a nice piano that chimes in now and again towards the end of the track, easily its best element and a huge reason this stands head and shoulders above "Yeah I Know" and some of the album's other tracks in this vein. Unfortunately, there's a strange faux-anthemic breakdown that feels like it should lead into some kind of a drop but ends up just sounding flat and out of place. In short, we're far from perfection but this is tolerable, a compliment for this album.

Nothing Revealed / Everything Denied
This song is weird. Matty's lyrics rhyming way too well to be improvised but sounding way to nonsensical to be planned. I will give it this though, the production on this song sounds like it had a lot of thought put into it, from the gospel-tinged backing vocals to the random vocoder and guitar solos. Unfortunately, the beat is another victim of repetivity and stands out as a frustrating constant amongst some interesting ideas, resulting in a song that both intrigues and annoys me. Honestly at this point I'm realising that even on the tracks with promise there's at least one decision with the production that has huge consequences for the finished piece, usually stopping me from rating it as high as it could be. When it comes down to it, I think that's clearly an indicator of just how rushed and messy this album is.
5/10

Tonight (I Wish I Was Your Boy)
If you can tolerate this song then you're a stronger person than I am, because I zone out right from the get-go with those atrocious high-pitched vocals. Things don't get much better, as Matty delivers one of his laziest vocal performances, his slurring delivery coming across as drunk. The instrumental isn't much better, from the finger snaps in the bridge to the washed out mixing and chaotic, orderless mess that is the saxophone, horn, bass and who-knows-what-else that makes up the bulk of this track. Yeah, this is what I call a definitive SKIP!
2/10

 Shiny Collarbone
If you didn't know this was by The 1975, you wouldn't think it was by The 1975. That may be a statement true of quite a few songs here, but "Shiny Collarbone" feels like the worst offender given just how emotionless and detached it is from everything they've ever done. If you enjoy listening to it I have no quarrel with you, I just can't hear anything here that makes me give any sort of an emotional response. It's so blatantly ripping off Jamie xx's somewhat dancehall oriented work, but without any of the intelligence, passion or understanding of how to make it in any way interesting or worthwhile. And that's why I hate this song.
1/10

If You're Too Shy (Let Me Know)
This is one of the only songs on the album that would sound at home on one of the band's past albums. It boasts a killer, heavy synth groove; bright liquid guitars; a great pulse provided by the drums; some unusually low vocals from Matty and a sensational saxophone solo. Sounds like the formula to a great The 1975 song, right? Well, I'd to make something clear. Just making a song with all these elements functioning in excellence together as an example of one of the album's most cohesive tracks does NOT mean it's a good or compelling song and, quite frankly, I find very little worth caring about outside of the cool sound of this thing. The lyrics lack the engaging storytelling of "Me & You Together Song" or "Jesus Christ 2005 God Bless America", and lack the uncompromising fun and self awareness of their older singles like "Love Me", "Heart Out" and "It's Not Living (If It's Not With You)". So, to all you fans out there selecting this song as the album's equivalent to those tracks, just know that this time around we're dealing with second rate material that can't stand on its own two feet without needing the crutch of nostalgia for the sound of the band four years ago.
7/10

Playing On My Mind
We now begin a stretch of five songs that bore me to death and serve no real place on this album other than to - you guessed it - extend the runtime. Because everyone knows blatantly pandering to a formula that maximises streams and playlist placement makes for good music!
In all seriousness, with so many songs on here opting for either an atmospheric ballad or mindless electronica it's pretty glaringly obvious that the band were just out of ideas and wanted a way to increase their profit by landing on as many background-noise kind of playlists on Spotify. If you couldn't already tell, this is yet another song I hate. Funny that.
2/10

Having No Head
I guarantee that Matty and George were utterly stoned whilst coming up with this track. I imagine it went something like this...
Matty: so, what if we had like, ANOTHER atmospheric cut to show how sophisticated and eclectic our taste is
George: yeah yeah, I can't wait to produce another track that sounds completely identical to the last four in this style
Matty: nah mate, this one's gonna be different innit
George: oh yeah, how's that
Matty: well, i was thinking we've not got any long songs on this album yet, so we should make it six minutes
George: okay i think see where you're going with this
Matty: and then we transition it into a whirring blurring tech house track with bloopy bass and skittery hi-hats
George: yeeeeeah

In all seriousness, I actually think this is far and away the best electronic/instrumental/ambient track on the album, or however you want to describe these things, but its still incredibly derivative of artists who regularly produce music in this style and doesn't quite hold up.
6/10

What Should I Say
Okay...surprisingly this is a track I can get behind! I never thought making a compromise between "Frail State of Mind"'s garage stylings and "Having No Head"'s jumble of sounds (in particular the tech house of the latter half) would work, but it does. I think somewhat stripping the main beat back and underlining it with an almost tropical drum pattern was a great move, and I can't deny the excellent bass groove in the chorus either. If this track has any flaws, it's maybe a little overly repetitive or drawn out, and if you're not a fan of Healy's vocals being pitched down in the way they are here it'll likely be an immediate turnoff, but I actually really like this track.
8/10

Bagsy Not In Net
The only reason this song is on the album is because the band promised a 22 track album and only had 21 songs - and man it shows! In terms of its general soundscape, there's nothing especially wrong or unpleasant here, but all this track is is a bunch of loops that sound good thrown together, with no progression or relevance in the album. That doesn't make a good song. As far as I'm concerned, that barely qualifies as a song.
1/10

Don't Worry
This would be a really sweet, emotional moment on the album. In fact, it actually features Matty's dad Tim Healy and the two of them sing together. This is a song that Tim actually wrote when Matty was a boy and, whilst that shows in its simplistic lyrics and repetitive structure, the honesty and sentimentality shines through. Well, it would. Unfortunately, it feels like the production on this one is working overtime to eradicate the emotional core of this song and reduce it to another mindless drone of nothing, swamping everything in humid synths drenched in reverb, pairing beautifully with the overload of autotune but completely undermining the purpose of the song. I want to love this like I loved some of the slower moments on A Brief Inquiry, but that clearly wasn't meant to be.
4/10

Guys
I have very little to say about this song. It's a sweet, smooth ode to Matty's fellow bandmates that once again opts for a slow britpop framework. It's pretty great. That's all there is to say.
8/10

*If I was to judge "People" without the context of the album, it would easily be an 8/10. If you think that means I should have given it an 8/10 then go reread what I said about it. Context is a powerful thing my friend.


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So, that's all the original tracks rated and (briefly) reviewed. I hope you enjoyed and if you haven't already I recommend reading the main review of the album.

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"Notes On A Conditional Form"
The 1975
22nd May 2020
Dirty Hit / Polydor
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