Album reviews: Talos impresses, while The 1975 offer a mixed bag
Matty Healy of The 1975; and Cork artist Talos, aka Eoin French.
There are bands people love. And bands people love to hate. And there is Matty Healy’s The 1975 – a group that evoke positive and negative feelings, often at the same time and in the same person.
Their big innovation is that they’re a rock band that play pop music (which is probably the only sensible thing for a rock band to do in 2022). Allied to that is Healy’s tendency to shoot off his mouth and to generally impress upon you the scale of his ego (it’s pretty big).
All those strengths and flaws are on display on their fifth album, which swings from the sublime to the ridiculous and all the way back again.
It begins with a moment of haunting triumph, as Healy’s falsetto comes swooping in over the LCD Soundsystem-esque piano refrain on ‘The 1975’ (a reminder every group should name a song after themselves).
But then we’re into the dreadful Happiness which feels like a smug indie take on Simply Red – complete with oodles of saxophone (a reminder that only David Bowie could retain his cool while parping a sax).
Healy has hit reset since the group’s last album. The 1975 have brought in Taylor Swift/Lana Del Rey sideman Jack Antonoff as producer while there is a cameo from Japanese Breakfast’s Michelle Zauner.
All that effort has resulted in at least one stone-cold banger in Part of the Band – where Healy gets out of his own way and delivers a chunk of exquisite Bon Iver style chamber pop (with Zauner on backing vocals). He should try it more often.
Eoin French, the Cork-born composer and former architectural student behind Talos, lowers the temperature with a thoughtful, sublime third album.
The theme, as per the title, is the struggle to find peace in a world that seems to be swinging off its hinges.
French’s solution is to dive deep into orchestral melancholy on Meridians (which sounds like Coldplay in a fever dream) and to rhapsodise like a one-man Celtic Sigur Rós on KITES.
The best is saved for the final curtain as he duets with Lisa Hannigan on the gorgeous, ennui-steeped Crows. Three years since his previous LP, French demonstrates that some things are worth waiting for with a stunning comeback.
