The 1975: Notes On A Conditional Form (Dirty Hit)
Verdict: Flawed shot at glory
Charli XCX: How I’m Feeling Now (Asylum)
Verdict: From lockdown, with love
Rating: 
Steve Earle & The Dukes: Ghosts Of West Virginia (New West)
Verdict: Powerful musical theatre
Rating:
There was something eerily prescient about The 1975’s last album A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships.
Released in 2018, it looked at the impact of technology on human connection and seemed to anticipate a world where we now talk to loved ones and work colleagues via Zoom and Skype.
The Cheshire quartet’s latest collection contains similar insights. Notes On A Conditional Form was completed before the lockdown, but singer Matty Healy’s words are no less pertinent.
‘I don’t like going outside, so bring me everything here,’ he sings on the hard-rocking People. On Frail State Of Mind, he admits that socialising is ‘unlikely’.
Notes On A Conditional Form was completed before the lockdown, but singer Matty Healy’s words are no less pertinent
An ability to chime with the mood of the times is the hallmark of a gifted songwriter, but the making of Notes On… has been gruelling.
The album was due out early last year as a dance-orientated companion to A Brief Inquiry. There was talk of it being a concept piece revolving around British nightlife.
The band then began adding extra songs, leading to inevitable delays and a sprawling, 22-track LP lacking cohesion.
If this were an Oasis album, it would be 1997’s bombastic Be Here Now rather than 1994’s razor-sharp Definitely Maybe.
It’s hard to fault the band for their range or verve, even if their ambition sometimes gets the better of them. Led by a singer who is happy to share his innermost thoughts without recourse to the mute button, The 1975 are exhilarating in some places, infuriating in others.
Across 80-plus minutes, this trolley-dash of a record is hard to pin down. It encompasses chiming pop, thunderous rock, hazy R&B and jittery dance.
There are orchestral interludes, booming gospel singers, a 2019 monologue by climate-change activist Greta Thunberg set to piano music and a ballad, Don’t Worry, written by Matty’s dad, the actor Tim Healy, who provides additional vocals on the track.
There’s plenty to admire. Phoebe Bridgers is Matty’s backing vocalist on the swooning pop of Roadkill, Playing On My Mind and Then Because She Goes.
Matty Healy, 31, shows his gratitude to bandmates George Daniel, Adam Hann and Ross MacDonald on closing track Guys.
The mood, even when the music is upbeat, is introspective. ‘Will I live and die in a band?’ muses Matty on Playing On My Mind. He sings of religion and sexuality on Jesus Christ 2005 God Bless America.
The Stone Roses-like Me & You Together Song is heartfelt, but hesitant: ‘I’ve been in love with her for ages and I can’t seem to get it right.’
Inevitably, there’s filler. The orchestral interludes are disruptive and I Think There’s Something You Should Know is throwaway.
Having No Head is a six-minute instrumental that could easily have been dropped, but judicious edits aren’t on The 1975’s agenda. Had it come out as planned in 2019, Notes On… may have sounded less scattergun.
With the band already working on new material in isolation, a sharper focus could reap richer dividends next time around.
You can’t accuse Charli XCX of over-thinking matters. The Cambridge-born singer — real name Charlotte Aitchison — has walked a fine line between bubblegum electronica and experimental fare since writing I Love It for Swedish duo Icona Pop in 2012 and duetting with Iggy Azalea on 2014’s Fancy.
Charli XCX has walked a fine line between bubblegum electronica and experimental fare since writing I Love It for Swedish duo Icona Pop in 2012 and duetting with Iggy Azalea on 2014’s Fancy
She has now produced pop’s first quarantine album, a ten-track LP written and recorded in five weeks while she was isolating in LA.
How I’m Feeling Now is rough around the edges and inevitably a little rushed. It opens with the shuddering beats of Pink Diamond, a song about boredom, and finishes with blaring klaxons on Visions.
Between its two cacophonous bookends, however, lies an intriguing — and tuneful — pop record with lockdown-specific lyrics.
There’s an appealing directness to Detonate and Anthems, the latter a date-stamped snapshot of the new normal for a 27-year-old missing her mates: ‘Wake up late and eat some cereal, try my best to be physical.’
Conflicting emotions are deftly tackled. ‘Underneath, I’m nervous,’ she admits on Enemy. But there are isolation love songs, too. Charli is in America with boyfriend Huck Kwong, a video-game producer, and her voice is fittingly tender on Forever. Seclusion has brought out the best in her.
Steve Earle says he functions as ‘a Greek chorus with a guitar’ on Ghosts Of West Virginia, an album which doubles as a soundtrack to Coal Country, a new play about the Upper Big Branch coal mine explosion that killed 29 men in 2010.
Earle wrote seven of the ten tracks here for the show, with the other three based on West Virginian stories not connected to the tragedy.
With songs spanning rockabilly, bluegrass and psychedelia, it’s a powerful, thought-provoking piece of musical theatre.
Devil Put The Coal In The Ground and John Henry Was A Steel Drivin’ Man are work songs, the first laying bare the dangers of mining, the second a tribute to a West Virginian folk hero ‘buried with his hammer by his side’.
There is a grieving widow’s perspective, too, with the ballad If I Could See Your Face Again movingly sung by Dukes violinist Eleanor Whitmore.
Morrissey makes up for lost time…
With Radiohead, Pink Floyd and the Rolling Stones all posting vintage concerts online, Morrissey, right, has been slow in joining the party.
He’s now making up for lost time with a string of solo shows from the 1990s.
The first, still on YouTube, is taken from an electrifying gig in Dallas in 1991.
Morrissey has been sharing a series of clips from his solo shows in the 1990s including an electrifying gig in Dallas in 1991, pictured
Singing songs from his first two solo albums, plus Jam and New York Dolls covers, he’s in his element, prompting a chaotic stage invasion on a topical Everyday Is Like Sunday.
Live shows, as we used to know them, may be off the agenda. But U.S. singer-songwriter Phoebe Bridgers has just announced a ‘world tour’, beginning with live-streamed gigs from her kitchen next Tuesday and bathroom next Thursday.
Laura Marling, meanwhile, is planning an alternative by playing London’s Union Chapel on June 6 with a skeleton road crew — but a full-scale production and multi- camera footage.
Tickets for the event, which will be beamed live to fans around the world — one show for Europe, one for North America — are available at dice.fm.
A.T.
Singling out the best of the week
Hard on the heels of Love Lockdown, his brilliant YouTube live stream, Mark Ronson has released an inspired cover of Richard and Linda Thompson’s I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight, featuring British vocalist Raissa.
Ronson says he can’t stop thinking of the 1974 folk-rock standard in quarantine and he does the track justice on a synth-driven take that wouldn’t have been out of place on last year’s Late Night Feelings album.
Joining the rockers to cut lockdown tunes, Alice Cooper, right, strikes a typically aggressive tone on Don’t Give Up, recorded remotely with producer Bob Ezrin.
Alice Cooper has joined other rockers to create lockdown tunes striking a typically aggressive tone on Don’t Give Up
‘Our enemy is a cold, indiscriminate monster,’ growls the godfather of shock-rock, backed by a thick wall of guitar and keyboards. ‘Do we cower before it? Hell, no!’
Katy Perry strikes a softer tone on Daisies, a song she says is ‘a celebration of resilience’.
A taster for the pregnant singer’s fifth album, due in August, it is accompanied by an isolation video featuring tasteful shots of her growing baby bump.
Meanwhile, Frozen soundtrack star Aurora, who sang Into The Unknown with Idina Menzel at the Oscars, has released a power ballad, Exist For Love.
The Norwegian collaborated remotely with composer Isobel Waller-Bridge on the show-stopper.