The 1975 - I Like It When You Sleep For You Are So Beautiful Yet So Unaware of It

The 1975 - 

I Like It When You Sleep For You Are So Beautiful Yet So Unaware of It

Album Review

For this review, I put aside my previous feelings for The 1975 to give it an honest listen. Even with the slightly predatory name, I was willing to give The 1975 yet another chance.

To begin with, there's a pretty obvious reason why the singles are singles - they're the sort of thing anybody would happily and drunkenly dance to. The instrumental of the singles and some of the other album tracks are pretty fun and enjoyable (if you can get past Matty Healey's nasal drone - the man should seriously consider a career as a sean nós singer).

The lyrics aren't clever, but for the most part they won't give you secondhand embarrassment. Exceptions to this are song names such as 'Please Be Naked', not to mention the title track itself. (To give Please Be Naked its dues, there's no actual lyrics in the song, but the title is pretty godawful for what is a surprisingly good song). They tread the same trakcs as before - sex, in love, out of love, repeat.

The album slows down, it speeds up, it's a pretty paint by numbers affairs. There's a nice piano ballad (Please Be Naked), impressive female backing vocals (A Change of Heart) and even some cool jazz-esque stuff (If I Believe You). Borrowing from those before you isn't a bad thing, given it's pretty hard to be totally original in music, but nothing about this album feels fresh. It doesn't borrow from other songs, it just takes a song and puts a new name to it.

Many of the songs feel like covers of songs released long beforehand. Love Me is an absolute Fame rip-off but in the grand scheme of this album it's pretty good okay - not cause it's a good song, but putting it up against the rest of the album. However, the song is literally Fame. If you wanna hear this song but better, just go listen to Fame by David Bowie. A Change of Heart is a slower version of the opening to Bloc Party's I Still Remember, so much so I felt a certain shock when I didn't hear Kele Okereke's vocals come it,

Album highlights are easily the singles - Love Me, UGH!, The Sound, Somebody Else and Change of Heart, who stand out based on the fact they don't totally bore you to death. Please Be Naked is surprisingly good, and If I Believe You can probably be redeemed in the sense that it's not totally uninspired. The rest of this album is perhaps best avoided if you aren't much of a 1975 fan. At seventeen songs long, the album feels less like an enjoyable experience and more like an endurance test. By the 9th song, you'll be wondering why you didn't turn this off long ago.

If I Like It When You Sleep For You Are So Beautiful Yet So Unaware of It has proved anything, it's that The 1975 are excellent at ripping off decent bands and musicians. Middling of the road at the best, it's not necessarily that the album is bad per say - it's simply a case that you've heard every single song done a thousand times before. Nothing new is being brought to the table, and so the album struggles to hold attention. The songs aren't bad, just bland.

3/10