The 1975 thrill on the last UK date of their Still… At Their Very Best tour

Resorts World Arena, Birmingham, 21 February 2024

With The 1975’s Still… At Their Very Best tour being followed by an undefined break before their sixth studio album, expectations for the band have never been higher. Fittingly, in their most dynamic and surprisingly intimate stage show to date, The 1975 proves they are not a live band to overlook: this is alternative pop at its Very Best.

Since the release of their fifth album Being Funny In A Foreign Language in 2022, the band, and frontman Matty Healy in particular, were thrust into the worldwide mainstream in a way they had not been previously.

Still… At Their Very Best is no run-of-the-mill concert

With their song ‘About You’ trending on TikTok and frontman Matty Healy’s controversial on-stage performances (including eating raw meat and kissing fans on stage) capturing public attention, the second leg of their tour had to cater for newer and older fans of the band. With its varied setlist, the show paid homage to each of the band’s albums, celebrating the evolution of their sound with their most unique and unpredictable performance to date.

The 1975 makes it immediately clear that Still… At Their Very Best is no run-of-the-mill concert. As a curtain falls, an elaborate two-story house set is revealed. It spans the entire stage and is lit by a single streetlight. A car is heard to pull up outside and the house’s door opens, and band members Ross MacDonald, Adam Hann, and George Daniel enter to uproarious applause, turning on the several lamps that adorn the stage.

The band is not wasteful of their expansive set

Finally, Healy is revealed onstage before walking to piano for an energetic performance of the opening track of Being Funny In A Foreign Language: ‘The 1975’. Building on the momentum of this opening song, the band then launches into ‘Looking For Somebody (To Love)’ and ‘Happiness’. Healy traverses the expansive house set, dancing around his bandmates. The energy of the audience is palpable as the band continues to perform tracks from their most recent album, including its lead single ‘Part of the Band’, electrifying the crowd with some of their most lively tracks.

As a neon sign reading “Still… At Their Very Best” is lowered onto the stage to momentous applause, the pride that the band has in this performance shines through before the house is flooded with pink and blue lights that flaunt the full complexity of the house set. 2016’s ‘A Change of Heart’ is the perfect companion to the lighting.

Complete with a hat from the 2018’s ‘Sincerity is Scary’ music video on a coat hanger and the streetlight referencing the cover art for 2013’s ‘fallingforyou’, it is unmistakable that this show is a celebration of the full breadth of The 1975’s work.

It is when the band launches into one of their earlier songs, ‘Robbers’, that the crowd is at their loudest, singing along to the notes of Hann’s guitar riff as Healy performs with some of the strongest vocals of his career. The band is not wasteful of their expansive set, with Healy then appearing on the roof of the house, lit by a single spotlight, to sing 2013’s ‘So Far (It’s Alright)’, a song the band have only performed once before on this tour.

With the crowd ecstatic following this surprise song, excited screams are heard from the barricade before a spotlight reveals Healy’s father, Tim Healy, sitting inside the house with a microphone in hand. What follows is a strikingly intimate performance of the 2022 song ‘All I Need To Hear’, as Tim Healy is overlooked by his son and a fittingly emotional audience waves their phone torches in support. The band does not waste this emotional moment, following the performance with two of their most popular love songs, ‘fallingforyou’ and ‘About You’, the latter of which is accompanied by a memorable vocal solo from guitarist Polly Money as Healy playfully sways around her.

The most striking moment of the show comes as Healy appears on the B-Stage

Appearing relaxed at a piano, Healy then breaks the fourth wall between the house and the audience, making it clear that the band have created this show as an amalgamation between concert and meta-theatre. Poignantly, this includes Healy assuring the crowd that the previously announced ‘hiatus’ would be intercepted with the band working on their sixth studio album, playing a snippet of a new song, and reflecting on his close friendships with the band members. Quoting the 2020 song ‘Roadkill’, Healy says “I’ll take a minute when I think I won’t die from stopping,” lamenting the emotionally taxing nature of performing such an intimate show and allowing the audience to slip behind his frontman persona.

The most striking moment of the show comes as Healy appears on the B-Stage towards the back of the arena, cradling a naked wax figure of himself before performing a stripped-back, so-called ‘real world’, version of the 2018 song ‘I Like America & America Likes Me’. Playing upon the relation between Healy as an individual and Healy as a frontman character, the rawness and intimacy of this performance evoke a strikingly emotional response before the band picks up the energy again with a lively performance of ‘If You’re Too Shy (Let Me Know)’ from their 2020 album Notes on a Conditional Form. In the busyness of this song, the musical quality of the performance shines, with saxophonist John Waugh being a particular high point, bringing elements of jazz to the performance that made the audience erupt with applause each time he appeared.

Still… At Their Very Best undeniably shows The 1975 at their most daring

As the show enters its conclusion, the band performs one of their most popular hits: ‘The Sound’. With Healy instructing the audience to jump during the instrumental, the arena shakes, and the crowd’s energy increases tenfold, carrying into the fittingly energetic song ‘Give Yourself a Try’. Reeling back towards the more intimate side of the show, the band then play ‘I Always Wanna Die (Sometimes)’, proving that they can deliver with both energy and emotion. As a final surprise for the crowd, MacDonald, Hann, and Healy then appear on B-Stage once again to perform their heaviest track, 2020’s ‘People’, as a closing song. As the guitar riff plays, the audience’s excitement is palpable, ending the show on an exhilarating high point before the band is lowered out of view for the last time on the UK leg of this tour.

As the audience screams, it becomes clear it is both the striking intimacy and intense energy of Still… At Their Very Best cements it as one of the most unique performances by a mainstream band in the past decade. The 1975’s exciting dynamic with each other, the stripped-back songs and Tim Healy’s emotional performance make the massive arena feel like a much smaller venue. With all its theatricality, Still… At Their Very Best undeniably shows The 1975 at their most daring, using complex staging to create a uniquely powerful show as the band gives their highest quality performances to date, resulting in a cohesive and electrifying concert experience.

★★★★★