Healy is out of rehab excited to get back on stage. Photo / Supplied
Healy is out of rehab excited to get back on stage. Photo / Supplied
Matty Healy has had a rough time of it lately. A year ago, The 1975 frontman entered a rehab facility in Barbados, to seek treatment for heroin addiction.
Seven weeks later, he left the clinic a changed man facing a new set of challenges.
"I lost my confidence quite a lot when I'd just come out of rehab," he explains. "I didn't have a record and I'd had two years of being defined by something that existed."
That "something" was the band's hugely successful second album, the verbosely titled I Like It When You Sleep, For You Are So Beautiful Yet So Unaware Of It. It hit number one both in the UK and the US, as well as both here in New Zealand and Australia. It also earned the band a prestigious Mercury Prize nomination.
The 1975, from left: George Daniel, Matty Healy, Adam Hann and Ross MacDonald. Photo / Supplied
Now, Healy and the band are back with a new album – due for release tomorrow – and their first New Zealand show in three years.
It's been more than a year since the band last performed and Healy is can't wait to get back on stage and reconnect with his stage persona.
"I don't like being me a lot of the time, that's why I feel a lot freer when I'm on stage because I don't have to be me.
"I think if you're on stage, people have already given you the benefit of the doubt, so the things that make you worry about yourself, it's kind of an environment for them to be celebrated."
The band took two years off touring to focus on their album A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships, which will be quickly followed up by another record, Notes on a Conditional Form, due for release in April.
That means that by the time they arrive in NZ in September next year, they will have released four full length albums since first bursting on to the music scene in 2014.
"I think it's just the rate of the consumption of music," Healy explains from the English countryside, where he and the band are rehearsing ahead of the tour.
"I don't make singles, I write albums, then I take bits of it and put them out. I didn't really feel like I wanted to tour for two years in the modern world and felt like doing more on the record, but I also felt like doing that wasn't really expressive enough."
Healy working on the band’s two new albums. Photo / Supplied
Healy says fans can expect the next two albums to deliver a continuation of The 1975's narrative with consistencies that fans will recognise from previous records.
"It's the story of me, but I don't think that they'll [the records] be intrinsically related, they're not tied together, they're not remotely the same body of work."
LOWDOWN Who: The 1975 What: New album A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships out tomorrow Live show: Spark Arena, September 18
