The 1975 will release their highly-anticipated second album I like it when you sleep, for you are so beautiful yet so unaware of it on 26 February through Dirty Hit/Polydor. I like it when you sleep… is the follow-up to the quartet’s million-selling self-titled debut. It is a bold and brilliant record made up of infectious pop hooks and sprawling electro sonics, an ambitious stride forward for one of the UK’s most exciting young bands. It will be preceded by the gospel-tinged The Sound, which follows the hysterically-received Love Me and UGH!. “In 2016, everything has been done,” says frontman Matty Healy. “You just have to try and do it better. My generation consumes music in this completely non-linear way and we reflect that, we create how we consume.” The 1975 have had the sort of breakthrough that only happens once a decade. Healy, Adam Hann (guitar), Ross MacDonald (bass) and George Daniel (drums) formed at school on the outskirts of Manchester ten years ago. After years of honing their sound, 2013’s debut album revealed a band who could blend accessible and anthemic choruses with an artistic aesthetic. It was a record where indie-pop grooves and alt R&B atmospherics sat seamlessly next to each other. A mass audience connected with indelible tracks such as Chocolate, Girls, Sex and Robbers and their tales of adolescent recklessness. The group toured the world, playing sold-out shows from Kuala Lumpur to San Francisco. All these experiences feed into the band’s second album which was recorded in Los Angeles and produced by Healy and Daniel alongside production collaborator Mike Crossey. It distils their love of 80s sonics into something that sounds impossibly now, a record that shifts between shimmying guitar grooves (She’s American, Love Me), experimental electronic soundscapes (I like it when you sleep…, Please Be Naked) and cascading, adventurous pop songs (If I Believe You, Lostmyhead, The Sound) whilst always sounding part of the same whole. “Why create one type of music when nobody consumes one type of music?” says Healy. “The idea of rules in art is completely farcical.” The 1975 have made a record that captures the exhilarating feeling of falling in love and the devastation of breaking-up and all the fun and drama in between. They have a cherished mix of unlimited ambition and the rarefied talent to back it up. “We’re like brothers, we really are. We don’t know anyone who is as close with their siblings as we are we each other because from age 13 to now we’ve been in the same room together,” says Healy. This spirit is at the heart of their glorious second album. It will be one of the most important releases of 2016. The 1975 have set a benchmark that will be hard to follow.