To the strains of Mahler’s Adagietto, Matty Healy has just felt himself up on a couch, taken at least two bites of a raw slab of meat, done shirtless push-ups in front of a wall of ’60s TV sets, and climbed right into one of those flickering screens.
Where does one go from there?
Jack White insists that fans hand in their phones before a show so they can have a “100% human experience”. Prince had men on stage armed with flashlights to blind anyone holding up their mobile. And, even less subtly, Nick Cave has been known to call out people who insist on watching the gig through a lens.
The 1975 have taken a different approach. Knowing that their average fans document their lives online, the band have devised what can only be described as the most Instagrammable arena show ever. The dextrous, genre-fluid musicians are dwarfed on three sides by giant versions of the empty picture frame that’s become an integral part of their visual identity.
Nils van der Linden