A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships is the third studio album by English indie rock band The 1975, released on 30 November 2018 by Dirty Hit and Polydor Records. It was produced by band members George Daniel and Matthew Healy, and is the band's first album not to be produced with regular collaborator Mike Crossey
The album got leaked four days before the official release. The band originally planned to release an EP titled What a Shame which was called off, as the project had become something bigger according to the band’s manager Jamie Oborne. Matty Healy thought that the third album should be the last one for the band but then he changed his mind and decided to make two records and release them in a six months time: For a while, I’d been thinking that this would be our last album. The reason I did that is that when you’re a writer, you want a good ending. The Context Of The Digital: A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships’ is the title of Gene McHugh’s essay. Talking about the inspiration behind the record’s title, Matty says: Not necessarily by the essay itself, but by the title – it was curated into a book called ‘You Are Here: Art After The Internet’.
And did they preface their new LP, A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships, with a 24-page manifesto that includes manic scribbles ( THIS IDEA HAS BEEN DONE BEFORE ), a picture of Healy petting a dog whilst on the toilet, and a technophobic survey of our contemporary clusterfuck of an existence that concludes: THE LEFT AND RIGHT GROW MORE APART BUT YO.
The 1975's third studio album ‘A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships’ is a game-changing moment. Clever and profound, funny and light, serious and heartbreaking, painfully modern and classic-sounding all at the same time, ‘A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships’ is a game-changing album, one that challenges The 1975’s peers – if, indeed, there are any – to raise their game. So Healy had set out to describe his own experience, but in doing so has produced an artefact that sums up millennial life, a magpie pop masterpiece that could only be made right now and right here.
A Brief Inquiry is not the unqualified triumph the 1975 had in mind. It’s stronger and punchier than its predecessor, but has moments where the group overreach. You could argue it’s rather confused, but, as Healy would doubtless point out, it is meant to reflect the times we live in, and they’re pretty confusing.
Stretch that song into an album and you have The 1975’s A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships. There is so much good here, but there’s also just so. much. Be My Mistake is the album’s standout. Sandwiched between Love If We Made It and Sincerity is Scary, it’s a gorgeous little track, stripped of the bubble-wrap pop sensibilities and the buttery-slick robot vocals. For good or for ill, The 1975 have mastered the 2018 sound-a hyper-sweet confectionary of computer rhythms and dance beats and electro-breath echoes that is the hallmark of far too many albums. But underneath the puffy synthetics, they’ve also proven themselves capable of real rawness, an album for the good times as well as the tough.
The Lowdown: The 1975 are a band for our times. After the overstuffed sprawl of 2016’s I Like It When You Sleep, For You Are So Beautiful yet So Unaware of It, a record that in spurts revealed Matt Healy’s immense talent as a songwriter, A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships makes good on the band’s promise. The first of two planned records in a six-month period, the album is a chaotic, scattered document of modern society that manages tremendous insight into a life lived online that sidesteps condescension or generalization.
