Gig review: The 1975, Glasgow

There’s an air of boy band surrounding Mancunian electro-pop-rock axis The 1975, which perhaps goes some way towards explaining why they stormed into the UK charts at No 1 with their eponymous debut album the week before last.
The 1975. Picture: Neil DoigThe 1975. Picture: Neil Doig
The 1975. Picture: Neil Doig

The 1975 - ABC, Glasgow

* * *

All four are handsome lads and their crowd seemed to be predominantly comprised of female groups or young couples out on dates.

As such, they do a great job of fulfilling pop’s most basic thread of promise as lust-bait for raging young hormones, but the carefully sculpted sense of zeitgeist seizure in their music doesn’t feel wholly organic. Amidst a noisy and enthusiastically received set, they touched upon frosty chillwave synth balladry (fallingforyou), careening indie-rock guitars turned high up in the mix (Sex) and a bright kind of faux-edgy electro-pop that lies somewhere between the anthemic conciseness of Foals and the too-clean lines of Hurts (Chocolate). Switching between guitars and keyboards, they played under a simple, archly stylised hanging backdrop of rectangular neon tubes and pulsing monochrome strobes.

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The crowd’s reaction lent a certain thrill, and the band themselves were plenty of fun, especially if you bear in mind they’re clearly aimed at an age group for whom McFly were the pop titans of their youth. Yet it’s little surprise to find that lead singer Matthew Healy comes from performing stock (he’s the son of actors Denise Welch and Tim Healy), because the sense persisted that this is a group intent on emulating critical and commercial greats rather than becoming true originals.

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