It wouldn’t be unfair to say that The 1975’s Matty Healy is something of a divisive figure.
For every Facedown EP-era fan of his band who thinks that he’s the missing link between Jesus and Michael Hutchence, you’ll find someone – usually on Twitter – who thinks that he’s an egotistical gobshite with an unwarranted messiah complex.
You, dear reader, might just Quite Like That Chocolate Song, or have enjoyed his father’s work on Benidorm. You might believe him to be the 21st century’s greatest living artist, or you might deem his musical output to be of similar merit to that of this goat singing a Taylor Swift song.
You might love him, or you might hate him. But when his band’s this good, does it really matter?
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On an otherwise nondescript January evening in London, The 1975 took to the stage and laid a genuine claim to the title of ‘best band on the planet’.
Their new live show – half performance art, half a conglomerate of hits so sonically varied you’ll find yourself bopping on the spot before you’ve had the chance to wipe the tears from your face – is, frankly, a masterpiece, and we’d be damned if anyone in attendance didn’t leave thinking the same.
Divided into two halves, with the first being devoted to the softer cuts from The 1975’s (excellent) new album Being Funny In A Foreign Language and their wider back catalogue, and the second being an assault-to-the-senses-level smash-through of their greatest hits, it’s clear that every inch of the show and setting has been thought through with an almost neurotic level of dedication.
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And then, we have Matty Healy.
One part swaggering rock God, one part sadboy superstar, and all parts impossible to take your eyes off. You might think that he’s unbearable – but when he counts down from four and commands the crowd to jump their way into the euphoric climax of ‘The Sound’, there’s no question that you will. You’re never quite sure if he’s ‘doing a bit’ or if he’s actually having a mild mental breakdown in front of you; and frankly, that’s a large part of the charm.
You see, dear reader, the magic of The 1975 isn’t that they’re approachable everymen who you could imagine bumping into during a late-night trip to your local fried chicken shop. It’s not their charm, charisma, musical abilities, or sense of style. Heck, it’s not even that they’ve written some of the finest indie-pop songs to emerge from these fair isles in the last decade-and-a-bit.
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Instead, the magic of The 1975 is that they do things that are just a tiny bit… Well, mad.
Rather than taking to the stage in a stereotypical flurry of flashing lights and dry ice, they choose to construct a physical world around themselves, and deliver a scripted show that still manages to feel as much like a ‘gig’ as it does a piece of musical theatre.
And it’s when they’re doing these mad things – these unimaginable, ‘how on Earth did they come up with that?’, ‘is this performance art or is he mentally unstable’ things – that The 1975 are, truly, At Their Very Best.
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