The 1975 - Music for Cars EP

How much material is it safe for a band to release before their debut record? Do you simply do a run of singles in the wind up or do you release one or two EPs to generate hype? For the1975, this question has been made even more difficult in that they’ve been a series of other bands before finally settling down . As such, they’ve been sat on a lot of material for a while, becoming a stronger unit in the process. Now ready to unleash a record on the public in May, the Music for Cars EP is the third in a series of releases that have stood out but not quite shone.

The Facedown EP featured their first heatseaker in The City and demonstrated their quiet side whilst the Sex EP’s hit was its self titled track (She’s got a boyfriend anyway) and You also proved to be an indication that they could be a big band without necessarily having to make the ‘big tracks’.

So why a third EP on top of this?  The hope that the music will do the talking starts to make some sense in Anobrain. Sounding like an electronic version of the band Frightened Rabbit before kicking in to be standout track Chocolate, its pretty much the same as we’ve come to expect from a 1975 EP. Chocolate’s feel of auto-tuned edges lets it down comparatively to Sex and The City, but it’s still got a big feeling around it; the kind of song that will most probably ignite crowds at the many festivals the band have booked so far. The same can hardly be said about Head.Cars.Bending though. Whilst we’re all aware by this point that the1975 are using these EPs to experiment before launching an album that has been ready for months, you’d just like them to skip to that point.

EP closer Me serves as a sort of part two to the Sex EP’s You. A wind down with the kind of feel you’ve come to expect of Snow Patrol should they have reached their synth influenced phase towards the front of their mid-twenties. That’s not even a criticism really; whilst Snow Patrol aren’t everyone’s idea of exciting and groundbreaking its hard to question Lightbody’s song-writing abilities.

Maybe that then is the problem here, and it begs two questions.
Could the1975 have put Chocolate on the Facedown EP instead of Antichrist? Probably. Would that have meant that two condensed EPs were significantly better than three? Most likely.

Still, they’re one of the hottest properties to keep a watch on and its worth doing it before the album comes out if you fancy keeping hold of the contents of your wallet. The1975 are on their way up and all it’s going to take is the removal of some filler.

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Braden Fletcher