Produced by Mike Crossey, who has worked with Arctic Monkeys and Two Door Cinema Club, their spit-polished full-length is a throwback to the sort of CD-era pop rock album everyone remembers buying at least once: The one with the re-recorded single surrounded mostly by less-developed, vaguely similar stuff. In this incarnation, they have stepped away from third-wave emo and aim for the gleaming, modular synth rock of Wolfgang-era Phoenix and M83's Hurry Up, We're Dreaming!, which ironically makes them less distinctive now than it would have in 2010. Emerging from this long, bewildering gestation, they now have the overcompensating brio of a band that is making its first impression for the second time- their band name, album name, and first song are all "The 1975." "Sex" has even been completely re-recorded and given a new, fumbling-teenagers-in-lust video treatment. To which we can only shrug, and say: OK, guys. Hi, we're the 1975, and this is our brand-new song "Sex", this same group of people are now telling us. Anyway, they disappeared immediately- their Soundcloud, their Bandcamp, and even that video came down unceremoniously, all before they had even begun to assume their rightful one-hit wonder status.Ī couple years later, we find ourselves facing a complete reboot. The black-and-white video showed four telegenic people with perfect haircuts performing near a carefully placed Johnny Cash poster, clearly a month or two away from fulfilling their destiny on the cover of several American magazines.Įxcept that never happened, and, in fact, it seemed that someone had made a number of mistakes- the band may have actually once been called Drive Like I Do, or maybe the Big Sleep, and in fact already might not be called the Slowdown anymore. The saga of the 1975 is odd and protracted: Once upon a time, in 2011, there was a perfect Jimmy Eat World mall-emo anthem called "Sex" by a Manchester band called the Slowdown.