Live Review: The 1975 , Bowery Room

story / Robin Kale

videos / Coco Zucco

Hot of the clocks of their piping hot 2013 debut LP is Manchester Four-Piece The 1975. Four good looking handfulls of haircuts and Carling with the most danceable stories on the planet right now-here for two night residency at the Bowery to embrace the Politically correctness of everybody and their Bottle of Working Class. So how did they fit the bill?
The night’s sold-out set opened up with Guitarist Adam Hann and George Daniel (who suffered a flesh wound during the show) talking amongst themselves before Healy cleared his throat and cued up Single and fan favorite ‘The City”. Throughout the 11 song + set Healy almost never breaks a sweat on the Bowery stage, breezing through a primarily album track set from their Self/Titled debut LP, which beat out Nine in Nail’s latest for the number one spot on the UK Charts. Halfway through single (and fan fav) “Chocolate”, lead singer Matthew Healy peers his head down into a girl wearing a Call of Duty Tee and opts to run his hand through the sex of his invincible Britishness. Period. You then get the feeling that you’re spending too much time as wearing a suit and tie until fan favs “Sex” and “Heart Out” ignite the crowd which sounds just as likeable live as a new ex-girlfriend. It’s a precocious full on kind of a feel-good that brings a straight to your face in realizing that perhaps you should’ve paid for this album before you decided to get into the show for free.

All domestic guilt tripping aside; to most young people surviving within the walls of the EU workforce (and beyond), New York City possesses a pretty stigma like no other cosmopolitan murder capital before it. The acoustics of the Bowery , until fairly recently, have been only decent at best for the most part…but a lot of foreign acts in the past tend to book the place anyway because of its contextual brightness and its accessibility. Class acts like Portishead and My Bloody Valentine with already established reputations, have opted to turn down stadium revenues to play within the respected walls of The Bowery Room. But for a relatively unknown debut band like The 1975 though, granted that even though being stoked to play the states in and of itself does make for an awesomer adrenal, even if the band sucks then the actuality of delusion could just be the Greetings & Salutations of Modern Day Sadface. See Sex, Drugs, and…well you get the point.

Suffice it to say I found myself climbing over the smells of Secrets and CK Marijuana in the click track intimacy of Manhattans most popular indie venues, and thats fine-I can get with that…but the moment lead singer Matthew Healy opens his arms up to the love during encore “Pressure”, somehow it all seems alright. After a thrilling acapella rendition of “You” to quiet the set, everything else just hangs ten. Whats more is that even after a million and one live acts at University it amazes me even today that regardless the Weapon laws in Great Britain being reasonably strict, US Crowds of British acts always seem to appear the most dangerous. Oh wait, that wasn’t really Dr. Who in those Ray-Bans just then was it. Well. In any event, The 1975 seem to have gotten used to standing over enough faces to make it easy on themselves by now… even in the face of a hit album. Guess its off to the shops then lads, good show.