PEOPLE POWER

Words

Photography

The 1975 have always been a hard band to peg. Since the release of their self-titled debut album in 2012, the Manchesterbased foursome have embraced a wide swathe of styles — acoustic balladry, bouncy Balearic house, Autotune-abusing R&B, the slick sheen of 80s pop. Their current album, Notesonaconditionalform, continues the genre-jumping journey, bringing elements of punk, neo-soul, downtempo electronic music and country into the band’s ever-morphing approach. And in this album’s first single, People, a song mixing T. Rex swagger with black-eyeliner screamo, there is the heaviest-sounding riff they’ve ever recorded – a riff described “ridiculous” by its creator, lead guitarist Adam Hann.

“The main riff in the chorus of People, that’s one of those jokey heavy riffs you play for fun, you know?” Hann says of the garage-glam anthem’s origins, adding that its numbskullsimple groove was regularly goofed-on during soundchecks before the band’s frontman Matt Healy suggested they maximize its potential for their new LP. Hann concedes that People may be The 1975’s “first proper rock song,” but the beneath-the-fingernail grime of its guitar tone first cropped up on the otherwise sugary Giveyourselfatry from 2018’s Abriefinquiryintoonline Relationships, which yielded a Grammy nomination for Best Rock Song the following year, leaving the band, in Hann’s words, “super confused as hell”. In both cases, the guitarist got dirty by cranking the overdrive on an Audio Kitchen Little Chopper head and then distorting the mic channel with a Thermionic Culture: Culture Vulture processor.

“We put this valve distortion unit across the mic channel, and that gives it this super-dry, ear-piercing quality that I’m sure many people are not too fond of,” he says with a laugh. “So when People came out, going by the comments on our social media, a lot of our fans were like, ‘What the fuck is this?’”

Such a reaction is hardly surprising. The in-the-red screech of People is in stark contrast to the other songs Notes Onaconditionalform. The album begins with The 1975 — their fourth

self-titled composition in as many albums — which builds a tableaux of piano and digitalist squelching around an impassioned monologue from climate activist Greta Thunberg. Me& You Together Song, meanwhile, is the kind of overwhelmingly jubilant, throwback jangle that would have scored a thousand teenage rom-com scenes in the late 90s. Hann and Healy conjured those cheery, paisley swirls by strumming Strats and 335s through a clutch of Fender Twins and choruscranked Roland JC-120S. Hann also credits his Music Man JP6, bought with inheritance money when he was a teenager, as the “secret weapon” behind the crispest tones beaming through Me & You Together Song, as well as earlier hits such as Girls and I Like America & America Likes Me.

As Hann says of his early-2000s John Petrucci signature: “In the middle position on that guitar the two humbuckers are coil-split and out-ofphase, so you get this super clear, crystal, bell-sounding clean tone. What’s funny is, because it was literally one of the first models of that guitar, the subsequent ones have different electronics; they don’t quite sound the same. We’ve hunted around on ebay to try and find an original one. I met one of the guys from Music Man at one of our shows, and basically he was like, ‘You just need to give me the guitar and we’ll find out exactly what it is.’”

Though Hann went through a Dream Theater-loving shred phase in his youth, his playing across Notes On A Conditional Form can sometimes take a backseat approach. Take his subtle and supportive work on the twitchy, Ibiza-primed Frail State Of Mind, an electronics-forward composition where he folds the slightest sparkle of six-strings beneath thick blankets of synths and sampled trumpets. “It’s not obtuse, it just fits in as a layer under that,” he says. With all members — including drummer George Daniel and bassist Ross Macdonald — also having a hand in layering keyboards and digital programming, Hann says that Notes On A Conditional Form was initially conceived as a more “ambient, electronic-influenced album” and sister set to A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships. Considering they first teased the LP with the jagged punk explosion of People, plans clearly changed along the way.

“We thought that we were going to make a slightly more leftfield,

Guitars

Fender Master Design 1950s Relic Stratocaster Moss, Fender Jaguar Olympic White, Music Man JP6 custom Pollock paint

Amps

Kemper profiles of 68 custom Vibrolux, 68 custom twin, Audio Kitchen Little Chopper, Marshall JTM45

Pedals

Strymon Mobius, Timeline and Big Sky, Keeley compressor pro, Klon centaur, Anologman King of Tone, ZVEX super duper cbass mod, Wampler plextortion, EH Microsynth and Hog experimental album,” Hann admits. “Those elements are definitely there, but the majority of the album is straight-up songs. I don’t think we anticipated that when we set out.”

One of the reasons for veering toward more traditional pop structures instead of an all-ambient affair is because the band were writing this material on the road while touring support of A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships — and as in the case of People, they adjusted the sonic parameters of the album during soundchecks. Adjusting on the fly likewise meant that the band missed their scheduled February release date, the album finally being issued on May 22nd.

“It’s proven to be quite difficult to write, record, and finish an album while continuously touring and marketing,” Hann reflects. “We had a [mobile] studio on the bus, which is great and definitely lets you get more work done on the road, but it’s not a replacement for a real studio.” He explains that electronic production touches were tweaked on the bus, but guitars and vocals were tracked between tour dates, when time and space wasn’t a premium. “We underestimated how difficult it would be to just drop in and out of studios to get it finished.”

Hann himself used a Master Built Strat for sessions in London, Los Angeles and Brackley UK, but also employed the JP6 and a pair of custom Fano JM6S, which were thrown through Fender Twins, Vibroluxes and the Audio Kitchen (On their latest round of touring, Hann has switched to using Kempers onstage). The 1975’s gear list was arguably more compact than on previous recordings, but Hann managed to think outside of the box in terms of tone and performance — he temporarily escapes standard tuning to explore the rich chime of just intonation on If You’re Too Shy (Let Me Know). “In this case it sounded cleaner,” he says, “and the interaction between the notes was nicer so it worked. But on another track, the crunch of standard tuning sounded nice in the context of the track.”

And while Hann exudes pride in what The 1975 have achieved with Notes, he insists that this album will be, in one key respect, a one-off. “It’s been an interesting year,” he says, “being on tour and trying to finish this album, but we would never do this again. It’s been super draining for everyone involved...”