SWMRS and FIDLAR Join Forces to Cover The 1975's Punk Wake-Up Call
Fans of The 1975 seem to be growing exponentially by the day, and who is surprised. The past year has seen the English pop rock band tease their forthcoming fourth studio album, Notes on a Conditional Form, with a series of blistering, unexpected singles, and, more recently, the band has committed themselves to playing only gender-balanced music festivals. A revolutionary band for a new generation, The 1975 is also striking a chord with punk bands like SWMRS and FIDLAR.
Today sees Los Angeles punk band FIDLAR and Berkeley punk outfit SWMRS joining forces to cover "People," The 1975's heaviest-hitting single to date. "People," which is set to appear on The 1975's Notes on a Conditional Form, is a frenetic, cathartic explosion that in less than three minutes manages to perfectly encapsulate a generation's woes, frustrations, and resilience. Unsurprisingly, SWMRS and FIDLAR find themselves all-too poised in tackling The 1975's punk feverish wake-up call.
READ: SWMRS' 'Berkeley's On Fire' Is the Punk Rallying Cry of a New Generation
Kicking things off with a literal wake-up call in the form of an iPhone alarm, SWMRS and FIDLAR waste no time in giving new life to "People." The chaotic, mile-a-minute delivery and deluge of fuzzed-out instrumentation perfectly matches the ensuing chaos of a world on fire that is at the song's core. On choosing to cover The 1975, SWMRS shared with us,
"When The 1975 released 'People' this summer it was a statement. loud, angry and honest. For a band in the mainstream selling out arenas all around the world to do something like that was bad fucking ass. It gets fans to listen to some harder stuff. Someone tweeted at us saying they got swmrs and fidlar vibes. So we got in the studio for a day and it turned out alright! We got Jeff Ellis to run a mix for us and all thought we should just drop it on valentine's day. So happy valentine's day!"
The notion of one of the largest bands in the world delivering a song that is typically reserved for smaller emo and punk bands was a sentiment echoed in Matt Healy's own words when speaking to NME,
“I’m an active emo man I suppose I'd call myself, I think that bands when they get to a stage that maybe we're in they wanna kind of graduate into being like a massive rock band whereas we wanna graduate like into being a small emo band, if you know what I mean”
Listen to "People" below:
