With a surprise appearance by none other than Taylor Swift at their London show, a video of Matt Healy sucking an unsuspecting fan's thumb going viral and devoted fans camping outside Cardiff International Arena the night before their first Cardiff show of two, The 1975's most recent tour had a lot of hype to live up to- even if the hype was a bit odd.
The indie-pop songs on their self-titled 2013 album were the soundtrack to my teenage years but I only really know a few of their newer songs. For a lot of gigs, you could get away with being this sort of fan. You can patiently tap your foot and sway your hips while you wait for the band to play the hits you're really after. This was not that sort of show.
The first act redefined what a gig is and forced you to watch every moment. The band walked onto their cinematic set which looked like the inside of a house, Matt Healy swigged a bottle of wine, lit a cigarette and proceeded to sing songs from their new album Being Funny in a Foreign Language.
Even though Matt Healy took up a lot of space in this act, the band played beautifully together and each member had their moment to shine.
But the first half was also a fever dream of Matt Healy doing weird things and telling us everything was ironic. In his "show about a show", he touched his crotch on stage, ate a slab of raw meat and even climbed through a television screen after images of Liz Truss, Vladamir Putin and Prince Andrew had flashed on and off.
But then just like we had woken up from our daze and were back in the room, Matt Healy properly acknowledged the crowd in a sincere way for the first time and the band finally delivered their dancier, older hits. I breathed a sigh of relief that now that was all over I could have a good sing-along.
Highlights were the soulful power ballad I Couldn't Be More In Love, their rockier I Always Wanna Die (Sometimes) and of course hits like Robbers and Love It If We Made It. Matt Healy took a self-deprecating tone when introducing songs from their debut album which they released a decade ago.
On the nonsensical but much-loved song Chocolate, Matt Healy said it was written when he did not know how to write songs yet as it has not got any proper English in it- he even said it might be written in Welsh.
As fun as the second half was, the first half did impress me even if it was all a bit too 'look how clever we are' at points. Although I have not followed them much in the past ten years, The 1975 have clearly worked hard at becoming a "proper" band that has songs they are proud of. Despite my inpatience at times, they found a pretty ingenious- if not bloody strange- way of showing off this growth while still playing the oldies to Cardiff last night.
Read more:
- All the big gigs in Wales in 2023 including Coldplay, Harry Styles, Pulp and Arctic Monkeys
- The 1975 fans camp overnight to see band perform in Cardiff
- Stereophonics' Kelly Jones teases song with new band and people are comparing it to Fleetwood Mac
- Sam Fender surprises locals as he rocks up at pub's open mic night and plays new song
- Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds announces major outdoor show in Wales next summer
