A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships
| The 1975
A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships
A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships is the third studio album by English indie rock band The 1975, released 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.
Critic Reviews
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Pitchfork
The British band’s outrageous and eclectic third album attests to the worth of putting in an honest effort in the face of near-constant gloom.
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Spin
The 1975 are still whoever the hell they want, and completely themselves.
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Rolling Stone
But on this stunning album, The 1975 take on that overwhelming anxiety with nerve and aplomb, and the result combines the fist-raising inspired by anthems with the gut-punch provided by precisely described longing.
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NME
For every stupid joke you’ve heard about avocados and house prices and safe spaces and jazz hands, this is a piece of art that shows another side to a generation, one of achievement, wit and humanity in the most confusing of times. Clever boys.
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Thrillist
The 1975 have a mawkish, treacly side that can feel disingenuous when paired with their more cerebral and trolling aspects, but their desire to tackle lofty ideas and entertain in equal measure powers the record.
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Independent
The band’s best album yet has enough hope, radical honesty and genre-spanning breadth to make sense across divided generations.
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Paste Magazine
For good or for ill, The 1975 have mastered the 2018 sound. 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.
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Stereo Gum
Whether people like it or not, there’s a real chance the 1975 are on track to be one of the defining names of the decade, a real chance they have a true generation-defining classic in them.
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The Guardian
A Brief Enquiry Into Online Relationships feels more like the musical equivalent of a drunk early hours social media post, as a spew of unedited ideas veers from inspired to faintly regrettable.
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The Ringer
The band’s third album, ‘A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships,’ is an incisive, clever, undeniably 2018 vision of pop music
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Ear Milk
Rather than playing the role of the bystander in black, the audience can walk away feeling invulnerable and addressed, with a clear lense into the man leading their soundtrack of the past five years. Healy's sincerity is there, along with his doubt and his insecurities, and that's okay.
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The 405
A Brief Inquiry is a record of substance that manages to both poke fun at and be a product of its time. The 1975 might be white-boys with guitars, but they're so much more than that.
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Slant
A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships is a content-saturated album for a content-saturated world.
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DIY Magazine
A bombastic, immaculately put together portrait of modern life.
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The Chronicle
All in all, this album is worth checking out.
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Sputnik Music
A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships does a lot of things well.
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music OMH
It isn’t the best album released this year, and it doesn’t have any of the best songs released this year on it. But what it does have is scope, vision and scale, together with power, texture and atmosphere.
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GQ
It’s an album that wants to do it all – it’s impatient, exploratory, it pays homage to inspirations, doubts itself and yearns for more – a jumbled jazz of genres that is all over the place, but when it hits the right notes, it’s masterful. An album whose main aim is to be sincere and without a doubt, it succeeds.
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Chorus.fm
The 1975 possesses a rare aura that translates seamlessly from record to stage, and these fifteen captivating tracks won’t be any different.
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The Ithican
Though the beginning of this album does not seem promising, the amount of vulnerability and honesty present within the lyrics improves the overall quality.
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Pass the Aux
Ambition makes The 1975 the band they are. It’s not always pretty, and not always easy to tie a bow around, but it’s the same thing that makes A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships a welcome addition to their catalog.
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Flood Magazine
The 1975’s third album finds a balance between joy and self-seriousness.
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Music Connection
In flipping from techno clickbait of the main singles to artful and gentle surprise compositions, The 1975 disorients and impresses. Some cohesion would have been nice, but it wouldn’t have been The 1975.
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https://www.goldderby.com/article/2018/the-1975-a-brief-inquiry-into-online-relationships-reviews-news-082413975/
The 1975’s ‘A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships’ reviews: Band surprises critics with a ‘masterpiece’ as good as Radiohead.
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The Chimes
The 1975’s latest album is the cherry on top to end 2018’s music scene.
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The Post
The 1975 exceeds expectations with the follow-up A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships.
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Black Squirrel Radio
If you are not already a fan of The 1975, this is not the album I recommend for you to listen to first. Fall in love with band and it’s previous music before jumping into this record.
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Spectrum Culture
So what do you expect from The 1975? Chances are you’re not going to get it here. You’re going to need to find it on one of the previous records.
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The Young Folks
A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships is both as airy and messy as its album cover with blips of bright ideas scattered throughout the 15 tracks with little connection.
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O Colly
In a few words, the album encapsulates variety. Each song has a unique sound to it. There are different instruments featured in every song.
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The Current
The dynamic range of the album as a listener is hard to digest on the first listen, but on the second try gives you a sense of how The 1975 is making rock music that could in hindsight be considered groundbreaking
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Slug Magazine
In its complexity and consciousness, A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships is lucidly reflective of a maturation for Healy and his bandmates, and a challenge to their listeners to get a little more “woke” along with them.
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The Modern Record
Let’s hope for a more even effort from the upcoming Notes On A Conditional Form to round off the Music for Cars era.
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Clash
It’s hard to ignore its shortcomings, and it is all too easy to rue what might have been, as there are moments of brilliance here that are too often cut short by an unnecessary lull in artistic reinvention.
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Affinity
If you’re a fan of artists like Declan McKenna, Billie Eilish, or Post Malone, you’d love the 1975 and their new album.
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The Daily Aztec
Perhaps the 1975’s re-evaluation as a band of the moment was particularly fulfilling to those seeking visceral reactions to the world crumbling around them.
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Atwood Magazine
I think The 1975 is one of the most exciting and ambitious bands we’ve seen in a long time.
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Exclaim
In most artists' hands, that would be a recipe for creative bloat. Yet more than ever before the 1975 prove themselves masters of the form.
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Financial Times
Its music goes from characteristically bright 1980s pop-rock to jazzy R&B and Radiohead-style modern rock, an eclectic soundscape that fits together coherently.
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The Prelude Press
A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships isn’t your typical 1975 album, but that’s what makes it so groundbreaking.
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Complex
A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships, marks a huge leap in both sound and style, and captures what it feels like to exist in 2018.
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The Fire Note
Third album from The 1975 delivers more great pop melodies, with an undercurrent of loneliness and addiction… so it’s a party!
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XS Noize
Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships is an album that reflects on the modern day issues of technology, drugs, politics and relationships with a beating millennial heart that is honest and hopeful for the future.
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edinboronow
Overall, this album succeeds the standards of previous albums instrumentally, stylistically, and lyrically.
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Indie is not a genre
For all its glimpses of brilliance, ABIIOR is also a wild ride through the mind of Matt Healy, a genre defying rock star for his generation of millennials.
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Transistor
As unlikely as it may have seemed in 2013, A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships makes a very strong case for The 1975 as the band that the world needs in 2018
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News Week
A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships is proof the band can do it all.
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Setlist.fm
The 1975 have outdone themselves with a mixture of foreboding presentiment, acceptance and reassurance.
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The Times
The 1975, a Manchester quartet led by the voluble Matt Healy, whose pick’n’mix musical approach and knowing lyricism have proved to be oddly fascinating and massively irritating, are the first band to capture the millennial experience on a dense album that, after repeated listens, reveals itself to have a kind of clouded brilliance.
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The Herald
The 1975 have aimed for the stars on A Brief Inquiry.. and while it’s not without flaws, their ambition is mostly achieved.
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Irish Examiner
A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships is something else entirely: a meditation on how easy it is loses your sense of yourself in a world of ceaseless distractions and where our heightened, online identities increasingly bleed into our true selves.
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The Telegraph
A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships is vigorously engaged with contemporary culture, and the band has concocted as sound to match.
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WRBB
The 1975 soars to new heights that cements them as the most interesting band making music right now.
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Outloud Culture
Much of the record retains the band’s classic sound, with just the right amount of digital pop.
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Shropshire Star
They're not just another indie pop band looking to top the charts with placidly written ballads. There's some thinking to this material.
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KRUI
A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships is not brief, which is ultimately its main flaw. But, it demonstrates the growth of the 1975, as it contains their best songs and strong experimentations.
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Its All Dead
They’re obsessed with pushing their own creative boundaries so much, that we’re forced to grow with them. So maybe we should close our browsers, but I think we should keep our headphones plugged in.
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Under the Radar
At best, A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships could be described as slightly passable background music. At worst, a self-indulgent mess that's taken far too many stimulants in the early hours and believed its own hype.
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Culture Hash
However on A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships, the soundscape perfectly matches the band. For my money this is the band’s best album yet.
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The Sound Board
It can be a bit much at times, particularly with the interweaving threads of ideas that only really coalesce after some consideration, but what does anyone expect from The 1975 at this point?
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Albumism
The album is less focused on the questioning heard across their previous records and finds The 1975 more confident in what it means to be The 1975.
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Ultimate Guitar
The 1975 continue forward in finding new sounds to work with, and despite being about 20 minutes shorter than its predecessor, the album ends up showing even more sonic variance.
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The Musical Hype
The sound is enigmatic and lush, while the vocals are chocked-full of effects. Clearly, Matthew Healy and company embrace modern-pop to the fullest.
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The Student Playlist
Listening to The 1975 trying to actively forge an intelligent, overarching statement in an era when sincerity has long since died makes A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships arguably the most relevant pop album this decade.
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No Rip Cord
The 1975 have been working their way towards this moment since their debut effort, and on A Brief Inquiry, they up to ante to a staggering degree.
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Young Post
It may feel more like a Healy solo album, but The 1975 manage to cover new ground, and hold your attention for a full 58 minutes.
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The AU Review
Matthew Healy’s constant urge to crystallise the way he sees the world in music and in conversation lines the album with a stunning authenticity. it’s poetic without being pretentious and this songwriting ability and the fresh electronic foundation of the album is a great new side of The 1975.
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Her Campus
The 1975 has a clear and distinct sound, but one thing they do extraordinarily well is giving their listeners a wide range of songs and sounds throughout their albums.
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We Plug Good Music
Ultimately, A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships may not be the best album of 2018, but it is definitely a game-changing record that will influence the music industry for a long while.
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Amnplify
A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships shows The 1975 at their best to date. It’s their most cohesive body of work and perhaps most honest.
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The National Student
Healy and the rest of The 1975 have re-emerged, armed with analysis on commercial success, rehab, and what social media is doing to humanity.
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The Daily
The 1975’s third studio album is by far their best.
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Idobi
Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships is a record that doesn’t hold back.
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Joe
The 1975 have made the most 2018 album of 2018.
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The Daily Listening
Opening with their iconic self-titled intro, the band speeds things up a bit in a robotic sense, making way for the album’s theme of technology taking over our lives while relationships take on more of a rush, pass, and go notion.
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Newsday
However, on its third album “A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships”, The 1975 manages to make all its ambitious pieces fit together.
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Spill Magazine
A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships is an exceptional album that touches on many important topics.
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Dead Press
‘A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships’, is a resounding journey into the unknown, proceeding to hop around genres like they’re city buses.
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The Capstone
In this album, The 1975 have once again dared to do more.
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Silver Tiger Media
With this record, The 1975 shamelessly intended to make their definite statement by giving people something to talk about for a very long time. Well, I believe they’ve done it.
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Immortal Reviews
The 1975 define modern romance in A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships, their latest record that finds beauty in love.
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Cryptic Rock
Despite the album’s very noticeable stylistic diversity that might alienate some so-called purists, The 1975’s latest effort is worth gracing any respectable Alternative Pop fan’s playlist.
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God is in the TV
It’s an engaging listen from a band who have quickly become as special as they think they are.
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Pop Matters
Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships ends up being a middling mess of genre-hopping.
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Bloggers Gamut
It is undeniable that the 1975 are one of the strongest bands of this generation.
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Exposé
The 1975 wanted to make what they dubbed as the most important records of the decade, and with A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships, they could well be on their way to doing just that.
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Rockhaq
With A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships, The 1975 have created an album that will connect to my generation on a deep and reassuring level, letting us know that as confusing as everything gets, we can all still find refuge in great music. 8/10
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MTSU Sidelines
“A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships” takes bits and pieces from the band’s first two albums and puts it all together for what is the most cohesive and well put-together The 1975 album to date.
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The Gown
It could be argued that the album lacks cohesion and is disparate in its album order, but I would argue that the fact that this band’ genuineness when creating and raising such important issues outweighs its occasional clumsiness.
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The Skinny
A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships is a considered, ambitious album from a band who are constantly pushing themselves.
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The Edge
The 1975 have proved with this album that they remain unpredictable.
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Riff Magazine
The 1975 tunes into its internal dialogue and looks outward all at once, filling in the seemingly isolating moments of these volatile times.
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The Lion Online
It is an eclectic, versatile and beautifully honest album, with varied music, intriguing lyrics and a culturally relevant theme that pulls listeners in and forces them to think about the good, the bad and the ugly of living in the 21st century.
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Isolated Nation
A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships is their most consistently enjoyable record so far, and may prove a few nay-sayers wrong.
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The Charger Voice
A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships is a gem of modern pop and rock.
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The Nicholls Worth
A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships is a huge step forward for the 1975.
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Sound Stage Access
A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships is an ambitious album that asks listeners to pay attention and think.
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The Pillar
“A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships,” somehow sounds like an entirely different band, yet still sounds like The 1975.
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The Sentry
A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships, is standing to be one of the best albums released in 2018.
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HMV.com
On first listen there's a hell of a lot to unpack on The 1975's third album, but it's immediately obvious that this is arguably the band's most adventurous outing to date, utilising a much broader palette of styles and textures than either of their two previous albums manages in one sitting.
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Melodic Magazine
This is not just “the album of 2018;” it is 2018.
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The Renegade Rip
The album takes you through time, wrecks your emotions (if you have any), and almost makes you believe in love.
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The Northerner
The album contains a taste of everything.
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The Centennialight
The album is intense but, you will not regret listening to The 1975 and their newest rendition of themselves throughout A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships.
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Hey Listen
A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships is arguably the most groundbreaking and interesting album The 1975 have released so far.
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The Press
It might be a mess, but it’s a well-crafted mess, and if The 1975 are a band with only one place to go – too far – they might just be getting there.
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Brooklyn Vegan
As with the last album, Brief Inquiry makes The 1975 a great gateway band.
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The Irish Times
A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships is a pained reflection of troubling and lonely times but through expressing their own isolation, they may have switched on a light for many others.
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DBK
This was the first album I’ve heard in a while that made me feel how the singer felt, and that’s a powerful thing.
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Pipe Dream
If The 1975 has historically been bound to the aesthetic culture that surrounds them, this album sees them branching out by pushing the boundaries of its own aesthetic.
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The Whit Online
The band hit the nail right on the head.
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The Daily Free Press
“A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships” was an album that further separates The 1975 from any other band in the music industry right now.
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