Matt Healy and his band The 1975 put on a spectacular display of star power at Auckland’s Spark Arena last night. Our reviewer Waveney Russ was there.
The 1975 live at Spark Arena Photo: Garry Brandon Photography
Matt Healy, frontman of English pop rock group The 1975, stands at the front of Spark Arena’s stage, framed by a floor-to-ceiling rectangle pulsating with neon light.
Appearing more understated than his usual sharp dress sense dictates, he tucks his natural brown hair behind one ear, then the other and draws both hands into the sleeves of his brown cardigan.
The Auckland leg of The 1975’s tour is a far cry from the hydraulic-laden, treadmill-wielding arena spectaculars the band is known for, but visual projections are impressive enough to maintain the gloss on their role as arena innovators.
The 1975 live at Spark Arena Photo: Garry Brandon Photography
Less than a year on from the release of their third and latest album A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships, the audience of late-teens and early-twentysomethings sing along word-perfect to 'Give Yourself A Try’ and ‘TOOTIMETOOTIMETOOTIME’ as if they were the greatest hits from the band’s seventeen-year career. The success of these first tracks is due mainly to Healy’s charisma and the fact he embodies every trapping of the modern-day pop star.
Existing between alt-rock, emo and pop, Healy’s songs are a mix of grand pronouncements about the success of his band, and confessionals on opiate addiction, suicidal thoughts and the anxieties of living with technology.
The latest album is a clear attempt to make an epochal statement on existential despair and angst. It’s a millennial homage to Radiohead’s OK Computer typified by the track ‘I Always Want To Die (Sometimes)’. This evening, Healy performs the song on an acoustic guitar – a rarity for a band clearly swept up in the visual spectacles of any arena-bound, large-scale pop show.
The 1975 live at Spark Arena Photo: Garry Brandon Photography
For their track ‘Sincerity Is Scary’, a portrait of jealousy and hypocrisy amidst an indulgent blend of jazzy horns and piano, Healy re-enacts the song’s music video in a low-slung backpack and rabbit-eared hat. A scrolling projection of a New York brownstone in the background, Healy is joined by identical-twin dancers the Jaiy twins.
The dancers make most of tonight’s show feel more like pop, rather than the pop-rock territory the band often occupy. Healy ably mimics the dance steps of the twin dancers, though sometimes lackadaisically. His ability to move around so freely is aided by the absence of leads or amplifiers cluttering up the stage.
Healy cuts a compelling figure as he points the microphone into the audience during ‘It’s Not Living (If It’s Not With You)’, also from the latest album. Though his attempts to encourage audience participation give the impression that he assumes the crowd is entirely made up of superfan devotees. This makes the show feel less personal, quite different from the sincerity offered on the record.
The 1975 live at Spark Arena Photo: Garry Brandon Photography
During ‘I Like America & America Likes Me’ (named for a 1974 performance-art piece by German artist Joseph Beuys, where he spent three days in a room with a Coyote) Healy appears childlike, the lyrics about his fear of death delivered through Drake-inspired autotune. This innocent candour is different to the brashly sensual, frequently shirtless personality of previous performances. His openness about completing rehab for a heroin addiction is a big part of this album.
The show does not lack old favourites, although Healy does sometimes slip up on the setlist order.
The jaded may assume this wavering focus comes down to the singer’s prodigious intake of marijuana. Healy does drag his way through three cigarettes (tobacco, presumably) during the show.
More compassionate observers may note that the band frequently curates its shows to suit the popularity of tracks across regions. Australasia still has songs from previous albums such as ‘Change of Heart’, ‘Chocolate’ and ‘I Couldn’t Be More in Love’ on hyper-rotation.
The 1975 live at Spark Arena Photo: Garry Brandon Photography
The show winds down with a recent collaboration between the band and the world’s most famous environmental activist, Greta Thunberg. The track is a taste of what’s to come from the upcoming album Notes on a Conditional Form, due in February 2020.
Titled ‘The 1975’, which is confusing because it’s also the name of the first track on A Brief History, Thunberg performs an ambient, spoken-word cry for action on climate change: “Unless we recognise the overall failures of our current systems, we most probably don’t stand a chance.” Her words earn enthusiastic applause from the young audience.
Healy crouches at the fore of the stage, staring back up at the screen, which projects multi-coloured television static over images of the natural environment stamped with Getty Images and Shuttershock watermarks.
Collaborating with Thunberg is a clever subversion of the music industry’s tendency to lean heavily on features; appearances from guest musicians whose star power boosts a track’s appeal for radio and digital playlisting.
The 1975 live at Spark Arena Photo: Garry Brandon Photography
The 1975’s A Brief History is hypercritical of the role technology has to play in the manipulation of our feelings and perceptions of self. Their complaints are certainly not unique to the modern era, but the band’s cult following lends credibility to Healy’s scepticism about the rectangles in our pockets; the rectangles many fans view the show straight through.
Healy acts as an articulate, albeit enigmatic, mouthpiece for a generation traversing anxious times, and The 1975’s live performance is a journey in itself through genre-hopping mashups and Healy’s own internal demons.
It’s difficult to not be entertained by such tangible star power, with a lurid spectacle to match, but the copious amounts of technology on stage tend to do a disservice to a set primarily filled with songs about how technology is ruining our lives.
Nevertheless, if modernity has failed us like Healy preaches in ‘Love It If We Made It’, there are few vessels with more momentum than The 1975 to disseminate this message to the masses.
The 1975 live at Spark Arena Photo: Garry Brandon Photography
The 1975 live at Spark Arena Photo: Garry Brandon Photography
