Tuesday’s set, then, was a natural extension of records that fling together disparate elements fearlessly and preposterously. They are the indie rock boy band whose millennial OK Computer includes the millennial “We Didn’t Start The Fire.” Either your eyes roll at it or you roll with it, and those willing to shrug off their embarrassment are treated to an embarrassment of riches. Even more emblematic of their era: This nonstop curation-as-creation plays out in a mishmash of high and low culture, hip and unhip commingling without shame. Their magic trick is that the persona outshines the pastiche Healy is too much of a thinker and a bigmouth for his perspective to get lost in the kaleidoscope of touchpoints.
But Talking Heads were just one factor in an equation that could fill several chalkboards, and as the parade of hypermodern graphics behind the band reminded us, the 1975 are only stuck in the past to the extent that our entire culture is.Īll musical artists are the sum of their influences, but this band cycles through nostalgic references like a series of “remember _?” tweets, a library of enthusiasms manifest as a complex aesthetic. Like David Byrne, Healy sometimes loosely joined in with the choreography, his legs noodling and crisscrossing to the beat with or without his guitar. They performed that first song as the core four-man lineup but were soon joined by two keyboard players and two black women dancers, incorporating the “It’s Not Living (If It’s Not With You)” video’s Stop Making Sense homage as part of their real-life stage design. From the opening Strokes/Joy Division/Postal Service salvo “Give Yourself A Try,” they felt like a proper unit and not a Healy solo project - especially compared to circa-now Vampire Weekend, their fellow critical-darling poppy white festival act with an eclectic palate and Big Ideas. In particular, Adam Hann’s tight, Knopfler-esque guitar work on “She’s American” could be described as tasty. Healy had plenty of space to emanate personality thanks to a steadfast performance from the band. (The 1975’s emo roots really come through when the words are projected on a giant screen behind them or, in the case of lines like “She had a face straight out a magazine/ God only knows but you’ll never leave her,” shouted back at them by an adoring audience.)
Healy was lithe and charismatic in his cardigan and white T-shirt, his appendages flopping around as fluidly as his hair while he recited lyrics that would have made incredible AIM away messages back in the day. My doubts about whether these guys are Stateside superstars evaporated into the comfortably chilly spring air Tuesday night, along with the fog from whence their saxophone player occasionally emerged.
And unlike James Murphy’s band, the 1975 didn’t even have to spend six years broken up to be received as conquering heroes in Middle America.
Like, if “Love It If We Made It” is a generational anthem, how come it never cracked the Hot 100? On the other hand, LCD Soundsystem’s “All My Friends” (which the 1975 cribbed from on early hit “Sex”) became a totem without coming close to charting. Healy and his band have been debated online with an uncommon intensity, but even though they debuted at #1 with 2016’s I Like It When You Sleep, For You Are So Beautiful Yet So Unaware Of It, I was skeptical that their popularity in this country was proportional to all the critical scrutiny. “And now we’re playing the fucking car park. “I’m pretty sure we’ve played this venue 100 million times,” Matty Healy announced early on. Yet here they were headlining the parking lot behind the amphitheater in a “festival” setup I’d only seen deployed for legit crossover stars Mumford & Sons and Fun. Still, besides my cousin’s wife, who’s been riding since Day One, I’ve never met an American 1975 fan outside of music critics and their loyal readers.
Granted, the Manchester band are huge in their native UK, and they’ve been playing Columbus from the beginning, working their way up from a cramped underground bar with no sightlines to the 5,000-capacity amphitheater next door. Who are all these people? This was my first time seeing the 1975, and I was shocked at the sea of humanity in front of me, packed together closely with no easy path to the front.