The 1975 have dropped the first song from their new album, and boy are we in for a surprise.
‘Give Yourself A Try’ is the first taster of the follow up to 2015’s ‘I like it when you sleep…’, and debuted on Annie Mac’s BBC Radio 1 show this evening.
After months of presuming the band’s third full length would be titled ‘Music For Cars’, it turns out it isn’t. In fact, the answer has been under our noses for a good while now.
A press release – featuring little in the way of details – claims ‘Give Yourself A Try’ is “the first single from their third studio album ‘A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships’.”
Speaking on BBC Radio 1, Matty revealed that ‘A Brief Inquiry’ will arrive in October as the first of two albums forming a ‘Music For Cars’ era. The band won’t be calling it a day after, as they’d previously teased, either.
“It’s not a concept record,” he said. “Let’s talk about Music For Cars – I just change my mind all the time. What it was, I realised when I was doing the album before this one, any writer wants a good ending in their repertoire. The guide to do that stylistically was so potent within me and I’d always said I wanted to do three albums.
“I thought, I’m not going to stop doing the 1975 now. I’m not only going to do three albums. I couldn’t bare the idea of it. Music For Cars is going to be an era, then. It starts with two albums. We’ve got two albums, ‘A Brief Inquiry…’, and when I come in later in the year I’ll tell you about the other one. It’s not going to be a double-album, because that would be prog and annoying. It’ll be two completely independent statements. It’s partially because there’s too much to say to only do one record.
“The first album will be in October, the other will be in May of next year. I’m not gonna stop doing the 1975 now. I’m not gonna do three albums, I’m gonna do loads of albums.”
“We’re not going to tour this year,” he added. “We’re going to start touring in January and we’re gonna tour for ages.”
The countdown on the band’s website is still ticking away to midnight, and we know we’ve got a video for ‘Give Yourself A Try’ to come. While we try to make sense of what we know, check out the new track below, and read our first impressions here.
The hype machine around The 1975’s next album has been running for months now. Matty Healy first told us about his plans for the record back at the end of 2016, teasing a possible EP to come beforehand. Over the coming months we were treated to suggestions of track names, regular mentions of “1st June”, and news that that EP – titled ‘What A Shame’ – had become something even bigger.
Things stepped up another notch as mysterious posters started to appear in the wild, followed by a statement from the band carrying the ‘A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships’ title. Since then we’ve had a conversation with a robot, a whole bunch of posters, some VR action in a field and all kinds of whispered suggestions and half truths.
We’ll see you back here at midnight when that countdown finally hits zero.