If pop’s notable figures of the present time-warped themselves to, say, 1987, the UK band the 1975 would probably occupy a place similar to INXS, or Duran Duran. They craft super-catchy songs that ping-pong through pop-adjacent genres and aren’t afraid to throw in some sax skronks or vibed-out textural experiments. It’s a heady mix, and their second album, last year’s I like it when you sleep, for you are so beautiful yet so unaware of it, made it even more so. It front-loaded its vibed-out moments (its title track is a six-minute dreamscape, its strident bass serving as the only tether to reality) but balanced them out with exquisitely constructed pop songs that got meta-fantastic about 21st-century culture like the sumptuous “Change of Heart.” I like it when you sleep… documented a band with creative energy to spare, able to wink sardonically at selfie culture’s halls of mirrors while also being very much a part of it.
With a new album reportedly coming out sometime in 2018, the band close the book on the Sleep era with DH00278, an audio-only capture of the 1975’s December 16, 2016, show at London’s O2 Arena, one of two they played at the UK’s biggest indoor venue. (It was initially released as a concert film on Christmas 2016.) While it doesn’t entirely echo the thrill of being in the same EnormoDome as Matt Healy and his bandmates, at about two hours long and with 24 tracks, DH00278 serves as a broad, if flawed, introduction to the still-growing band and their potential. When it succeeds, it does so because of the electrified bond between the band and its audience, which gets a jolt from the casually audacious way the group brings together glam, shoegaze, synth-pop, and any other sound that might tickle its fancy—even when the 1975 fall short, their sheer nerve is worth applauding.
Live albums are now more of an oddity. Are they necessary in the age of Setlist.FM and YouTube and shortened festival sets, and don’t they mostly benefit rock acts, who seem to be out of fashion in America right now? Sure they are, if only because they provide a historical record of those bands who can keep a crowd’s attention for more than your festival-standard 45 minutes. A document of a single, two-hour show in one place, from the opening cheers through the big singles and into the long stretches of mood music—a recollection that isn’t done until the sounds of the crowd exiting as “Jungle Boogie” wafts in the background fade out—might be passé, but it does at least reveal which acts have built up stamina and magnetism.