Love Letter To A Record: IVEY’s Lachlan McGuffie On The 1975’s ‘The 1975’

Many of us can link a certain album to pivotal moments in our lives. Whether it’s the first record you bought with your own money, the chord you first learnt to play on guitar, the song that soundtracked your first kiss, the album that got you those awkward and painful pubescent years or the one that set off light bulbs in your brain and inspired you to take a big leap of faith into the unknown – music is often the catalyst for change in our lives and can even help shape who we become.

In this series, Music Feeds asks artists to reflect on their relationship with music and share with us stories about the effect music has had on their lives.


Lachlan McGuffie, IVEY – The 1975’s The 1975

Dear The 1975’s – The 1975

I first discovered you in my grade eleven drama class, being one of the two boys in this class, there happened to be many young girls who were at the time, quite obsessed with you – fanatical. At first I hated you, I didn’t want to listen to you and didn’t care about you. You were the band that took up my tumblr feed in black and white and I was deeply discouraged, and I wouldn’t dare to even listen to you.

And then, one fateful drama period, around two months after you came out, a young girl called Zoe put on ‘Settle Down’ through the speakers. For some unknown reason, I was immediately drawn to the rhythmic guitar that opens the song, and then those loose hats and accompanying groove followed it and I was hooked. It made me want to dance, and it made want to know what the hell type of record this was – because that song felt so far off what I saw on the internet – that I had to know.

The 1975 - Settle Down (Official Video)

You could then find a young 16 year old boy, delving deep into your record in his two senior years of high school, and funnily enough, you became the soundtrack to my high school life. I analysed your lyrics, all of which were profoundly simple but eloquent and poetic. I listened to your interludes and the space they provided in the record, I listened to your instrumentation and how it felt familiar yet so new at the same time. I fell in love with each song at different times, I fell in love with that fact that I could be my hopeless romantic self and write about it because you did too. I fell in love with you time and time again.

On behalf of the whole band, thank you for making it cool to be in a “pop” band, thank you for genre-bending, thank you for teaching us that layered production could also be emotional. Thank you for teaching us that not everybody’s going to like you – and that doesn’t matter.

And on behalf of myself, thank you for connecting with me through some of the most difficult periods of my adolescence, thank you for consoling me and encouraging me. I have never met a record which I have re-visited so much, each time discovering something new and something enlightening.

Love always,

Lachie – Ivey

Gold Coast group IVEY’s new EP ‘Gorgeous’ is out now, and you can catch them touring it live across the nation from this week. Dates below!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3ziXDbZ53Q&feature=youtu.be

IVEY ‘Gorgeous EP’ Tour Dates

Friday, 26th October
Black Bear Lodge, Brisbane
Tickets: Facebook

Friday, 2nd November
West Thebarton Hotel, Adelaide
Tickets: Facebook

Saturday, 3rd November
Gasometer (Upstairs), Melbourne
Tickets: Facebook

Saturday, 8th December
Waywards, Sydney
Tickets: Facebook

Sunday, 9th December
North Gong Hotel, Wollongong
Tickets: Facebook

Saturday, 22nd December
End of Year Party Vol. 2, Gold Coast
Tickets: Facebook

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