MUSIC REVIEWS

The 1975 “Notes on a Conditional Form” (Dirty Hit/

Interscope)

Do you have time on your hands? Of course you do. Then there’s no excuse but to dive into the hefty new 22-track collection from The 1975. Each time you think you’ve found the best song, another comes along.

The British quartet’s “Notes on a Conditional Form” is a typically ambitious fizzy affair, going from the screaming punk of “People” — urging us to “Wake up! Wake up!” — to the almost sappy pop love letter to the band “Guys” that closes the album.

It’s not too far from their last collection — 2018’s “A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships” — with familiar touches, like dubstep, orchestral sweeps, earnest ballads, a random sax solo and even a song about America (this time the sly send-up of the religious right in “Jesus Christ 2005 God Bless America”). But the new album is far stronger.

As always, frontman and lyricist Matty Healy alternates between being utterly sincere and sarcastic. He knows some people don’t find him their cup of tea — “mugging me off all across the nation” — but he’s not going to stop the painful introspection. “I’ve always got a frail state of mind,” he says in one song. In another, an alarming musing for fans: “Will I live and die in a band?”

The self-titled first song has become an album tradition and this time the band has given lyric duty to environmental activist Greta Thunberg. “Shiny Collar Bone” is a throbbing dance cut that has Jamaican dancehall specialist Cutty Rank singing.

“Me & You Together Song” has a gorgeous, strummy, Manchester feel and perhaps the best opening line they’ve ever written: “I can’t remember when we met/Because she didn’t have a top on.” That vibe continues with the drums on fire in “I Think There’s Something You Should Know.”

Not all of it works, like the flat “Don’t Worry” despite the vocal addition of Healy’s dad, Tim. And “Yeah I Know” is downright irritating.

But on the superb, gospel-tinged “Nothing Revealed/ Everything Denied,” Healy messes with his fans, admitting he was lying when he said he once made love in a car, thereby undermining the band’s totemic “Love It If We Made It” from the last album.

He can lie to us however he wants as long as there is music like this. — Mark Kennedy, Associated Press

Moses Sumney, “grae”

(Jagjaguwar)

No man is an island, but that doesn’t mean all men are safe from being islanded.

Moses Sumney’s new album, “grae,” proclaims this truth alongside others.

“And so I come from isolation,” says a female narrator. As she makes the connection between “isolation” and “island” etymologically, she has an epiphany: “That’s exactly what I’ve been, my whole life; I’ve been islanded.”

Sumney’s double album “grae” (pronounced “gray”) is existential, explorative and vital. In a world that feels anything but safe, his music is an extension of this reality, rather than a glossy façade meant to hide the pain. In “Cut Me,” he begs to be hurt: “Might not be healthy for me/But seemingly I need/What cuts me.”

“Grae” may speak of isolation, but the album itself is a collaborative ecosystem. From bass guitarist Thundercat to R&B legend Jill Scott to British writer Taiye Selasi, who’s voice acts as a narrative thread throughout, the album’s credits range far.

Sumney’s composition can feel raw and stripped down on songs like “Keeps Me Alive” and “Polly.” Other tracks, like “Gagarin,” are a cacophony of sound. Distorted voices, spoken word, humming, buzzing, tech infused jazz arrangements — it’s clear Sumney doesn’t want his music classified the way humans seek to classify. “I truly believe that people who define you control you,” are the words of the warped audio in “boxes.”

In “Neither/Nor,” this sentiment is echoed. Falling in love with the in-between, he feels others are threatened by the “undefined.” In a falsetto that borders on a scream, he sings, “They say/Oh, who is he?/Nobody.”

It’s this rejection of the binary that defines the album and makes its title, “grae,” appropriate. Life does not thrive in the black and the white in Sumney’s eyes. It blooms in the middle.

The power of “grae” rests in the fact that it is neither black, nor white. —Ragan Clark, Associated Press

Sparks

“A Steady Drip, Drip, Drip”

(BMG)

Sparks, that most European of American bands, has released one of their best albums nearly 50 years after their debut.

“A Steady Drip, Drip, Drip” shows brothers Ron and Russell Mael as eclectic, extravagant, inventive, melodic and theatrical as ever, preoccupying themselves with lawnmowers, the environment and life on their native West Coast, all while envisioning how an iPhone would disrupt Eden or the Gettysburg Address and fantasizing about Igor Stravinsky’s life as a pop star.

“A Steady Drip, Drip, Drip” follows in a similar vein to both its immediate predecessor — “Hippopotamus,” surely the best, if likely only, record of 2017 to tip its hat to both Mrs. Lincoln and Taylor Swift — and to many of the 22 studio albums before that one. No two tracks are alike, even when the subject matter is related.

That is the case with “I’m Toast” and “Existential Threat,” which are both understandably anxious, but the first alternates power chords with sweet vocal harmonies, while the other sounds like a klezmer band with a saxophone instead of a clarinet.

“All That,” on the other hand, is about as earnest as Sparks get, a paean to lasting love with a catchy melody that, if it went on just a little longer, could be the band’s “Hey Jude.”

“A Steady Drip, Drip, Drip” enhances Sparks’ position as the Picassos of art rock, their current resurgence proof of their irrepressible creativity and curiosity with no visible signs of slowing down, even as the brothers unsettle into their 70s. — Pabo Gorondi, Associated Press

Hayley Williams “Petals for Armor”

(Atlantic)

One of the most gifted emo graduates, Paramore frontwoman Hayley Williams spent a decade firmly restating that she was no solo act. They even sold shirts saying, “Paramore Esta Una Banda.”

But the band themselves evolved so much — from poppunk to Wall of Sound productions to Paradise Garageinspired ’80s, and with a lineup change on every record — that this belated rebranding and its curveballs won’t shock anyone. (It’s coproduced with Paramore guitarist Taylor York.)

Yet it’s Williams’ biggest leap from previous territory.

Her singing has absorbed the hushed shrugs of Billie Eilish, sung over the highmixed drums of clattering latter-day Radiohead. Unusual R&B-influenced song shapes invite ’90s folk-jazz comparisons. A funky Suzanne Vega?

Two winners, “Taken” and “Sugar on the Rim,” have the mark of Erykah Badu and Lady Gaga, respectively, while the broken beat of early highlight “Cinnamon” has roots in St. Vincent.

Give a onetime genius for obvious hooks her props. She’s gone subtle without turning dull. — Dan Deluca, The Philadelphia Inquirer