Notes on a Conditional Form
Notes on a Conditional Form is the fourth studio album by English band the 1975. It was released on 22 May 2020 by Dirty Hit and Polydor Records. Initially titled Music for Cars, the album was intended as the follow-up to I Like It When You Sleep, for You Are So Beautiful yet So Unaware of It. It later came to denote an era spanning two albums. The first, A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships, was released in November 2018. The band recorded much of the second album in London, Los Angeles, Sydney, Northamptonshire and in a mobile studio on their tour bus. The album faced several delays and was submitted only weeks before the onset of the global COVID-19 pandemic.
A maximalist experimental album, Notes on a Conditional Form has a free-flowing structure composed of conventional songs, classical orchestral interludes and ambient electronic instrumentals. The album contains loose song structures characterised by their stream of consciousness deliveries, neo-noir ambience, downcast string arrangements, melancholic orchestral flourishes and sudden contrasts. Guest contributors to the album include Phoebe Bridgers, FKA Twigs, Cutty Ranks, climate change activist Greta Thunberg, and Matty Healy's father, Tim.
Notes on a Conditional Form incorporates numerous genres, combining house, UK garage and various electronic music subgenres with guitar-based acoustic folk, emo, country and multiple rock music subgenres. Thematically, the album focuses on the intricacies of human existence and uses introspection, retrospection, self-reflection and straightforward storytelling. It explores themes of isolation, uncertainty and anxiety, inspired by the 2017 documentary Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold and Bruce Springsteen's 1982 album Nebraska. The album's lyrics provide a deconstruction of Healy's extroverted persona, with several reviewers regarding it as the 1975's most personal record.
Prior to the album's debut, the band released "The 1975" and the singles "People", "Frail State of Mind", "Me & You Together Song", "The Birthday Party", "Jesus Christ 2005 God Bless America", "If You're Too Shy " and "Guys". A North American leg of the band's Music for Cars Tour, planned in support of the album, was cancelled several months prior to the record's debut. An online art exhibition entitled Artists Respond to NOACF, featuring music videos created by various artists, was released in its place. The album debuted atop the UK Albums Chart and reached number one in Australia and Scotland. Elsewhere, it peaked within the top five in Ireland, New Zealand and the United States, and the top 20 in Canada and Japan. The album polarised contemporary music critics; some lauded it as the band's magnum opus, while others derided it as confusing, chaotic and directionless. Despite this, the album appeared on numerous year-end lists and was hailed as the best release of 2020 by The Music.
Background and release
The 1975 released their second studio album, I Like It When You Sleep, for You Are So Beautiful yet So Unaware of It, in February 2016. The record peaked atop the UK Albums Chart and the US Billboard 200 and was considered by numerous critics to be one of the best albums of 2016. In February 2017, lead singer Matthew Healy tweeted: "Music For Cars – 2018". In an April interview on Zane Lowe's Beats 1 Radio show, the singer confirmed the title Music For Cars and announced a 2018 release, saying " has always been called that, and we were always gonna do a trilogy of records". He later told Tom Connick of NME that the title was a reference to the band's third extended play of the same name, saying it "was always my favorite title of everything we'd ever done". With Music For Cars, the singer aimed to create the most important pop album of the decade, hoping to achieve the same impact as Radiohead's OK Computer and the Smiths' The Queen Is Dead.In August 2017, the 1975 stated they were in the editing process of Music For Cars, having over two hours worth of material. Healy also revealed the name of a new song, "Jesus Christ 2005 God Bless America", while the band's manager Jamie Oborne said the first recording sessions for the album were planned for September. Posters promoting the album began emerging around London and Manchester in April 2018. In May, the 1975 announced that Music For Cars would now serve as an umbrella term to denote an "era" comprising two albums. Regarding the decision to release two separate bodies of work rather than a double album, Healy called the double album format "prog and annoying... they're self-serving".
The first part of the Music For Cars era, A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships, was released on 30 November 2018. It received widespread critical acclaim and won British Album of the Year at the 2019 Brit Awards. Although Healy sought to release the second album in May 2019, Notes on a Conditional Form became available for pre-order on Apple Music shortly after the song "The 1975" appeared in July 2019, with an expected album release date of 21 February 2020. The official artwork was also unveiled, featuring a yellow stripe and the album's title written in various languages. The release date was later moved to 24 April as a result of vinyl production issues, before being delayed again to 22 May. A revised album cover was also revealed, featuring the album's name, the band's name and the phrase "Music For Cars" on the top, while the initials of Notes on a Conditional Form are featured in the upper-right corner. The former artwork would only be used for the digital version. Regarding the multiple delays, Healy said they were caused by giving interviewers arbitrary release dates. Ultimately, Notes on a Conditional Form was released on 22 May 2020.
Recording and production
The recording of Notes on a Conditional Form took place over 19 months in 15 different studios, spanning four countries. The 1975 began writing the album during the same period as A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships and continued throughout 2019 during their Music for Cars Tour. Most of the album's electronic elements were created in a mobile studio within their retrofitted tour bus, while the guitars and vocals were recorded between tour dates. The band's guitarist Adam Hann told Gregory Adams of Guitar World that it proved challenging to record and tour simultaneously, saying it was difficult switching between the bus and studio. From around late July, the band spent four months recording in Los Angeles. After returning to the UK, they took up residence at the Angelic Residential Recording Studio in Northamptonshire for "super extended" sessions. These sessions resulted in what Healy described as "the first record... that's just us in a room". The final recording sessions took place in the basement of their record label's office in Sydney, Australia, while the band toured Australasia. Ultimately, the 1975 submitted the album only weeks before the COVID-19 pandemic overtook the world.The 1975 designed Notes on a Conditional Form as an experimental album meant to represent dance music in the UK, taking inspiration from the British club scene, Burial, the Streets and Brian Eno. Healy guided the album's creative direction, working closely with the band's primary producer and drummer, George Daniel, on all aspects of songwriting. Healy described their working relationship a symbiotic creative partnership built on a "shared musical vocabulary". During the album's recording, he focused on multiple loosely defined ideas simultaneously, while Daniel had a detail-oriented approach. The pair created most of the record's songs as rough ideas; Healy used a guitar or piano, while Daniel programmed snippets on his computer. After creating an instrumental, the former would then add the lyrics. The pair often listened to music for inspiration, analysing a song to identify the "vibes" they sought to emulate. Using "Having No Head" as an example, Healy told Ryan Dombal of Pitchfork that the song began after they listened to virtuoso pianist Frédéric Chopin. It sparked a conversation about the band's love for pianos in ambient music, which led to the creation of "Having No Head".
Notes on a Conditional Form is more collaborative than the 1975's previous albums. Healy said the prior omittance of other vocalists came from his dislike of the modern culture of features, feeling they were too commercialised and lacked authenticity. Speaking on the album's vocal collaborators, he said: "I think there's an authenticity to the collaboration on this record because it came from nothing but friendship and excitement of music." Swedish teenage activist Greta Thunberg provides a speech on climate change in "The 1975", Cutty Ranks is the sole vocalist on "Shiny Collarbone", FKA Twigs provides introductory vocals on "If You're Too Shy " and additional vocals on "What Should I Say", and Tim Healy duets with his son on "Don't Worry".
Phoebe Bridgers represents the most prominent collaborator on Notes on a Conditional Form, contributing to four songs. Healy exchanged messages with Bridgers, a longtime fan of the 1975, and they began talking about each other's music. Daniel invited the singer and Marshall Vore, her drummer, to hangout while the band were in Los Angeles. She later became "inherently" part of the album, described by Healy as adding a "country-emo Americana" element. Healy said that he did not experience his usual collaboration-related anxiety when working with Bridgers, describing it as akin to playing an instrument. She recorded a solo version of "Jesus Christ 2005 God Bless America", which impressed Healy enough for him to ask her to record harmonies for other songs. She later travelled to England to record "Then Because She Goes", "Roadkill" and "Playing on My Mind", telling Salvatore Maicki of The Fader: "I love their turnaround time, it's fucking great. That's, like, true punk rock."