Music
If you were on Tumblr circa 2014, you’ll remember exactly how to identify The 1975: one glowing rectangle lighting up the silhouette of one raggedy-haired frontman. That was the genius of Tobias Rylander, who has been the band’s creative director for over a decade.
Today he’s speaking from his native Sweden, Rylander is a stage designer who has worked everyone, including Beyonce’s current Renaissance tour, fka twigs, and Skepta. Beginning as a lighting designer for Swedish classics Lykke Li, Miike Snow and Fever Ray, Rylander got his big break when he started working with The 1975. To the band, he’s transitioned from fancy lights man to their creative director to something else entirely: “In so many ways, we’ve become more or less family”.
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The pair met when the band were about to release their self-titled debut; it’s been a decade that the band has worked with Rylander. “Since I’ve been with them for so long, I really understand the creative process, which is different every time,” he says. “The biggest difference now is that Matthew is much more aware of what I’m doing, and he’s leading me a little bit more these days. From being a rock star, he’s become the director. When I started, we were doing a straight-up rock show. Now we’re creating a film, a theatre piece, a musical and a rock show.”
Rylander was therefore in the best position to understand the brand new brief of The 1975 tour: At Their Very Best. But even then, he was hesitant. “It took Matthew some time to convince me of what we were doing. It was quite scary to do something so unexpected from a band where we have built such a stark visual identity, but he keeps proving that they’re a brilliant, live performing band. I’ve never seen them this good.”
“They’ve always performed as a rock band, but now they perform as a family.”
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After years of performing, what does the band define as their Very Best? Being Funny was an exploration of sincerity after years of dodging it; visually, this meant taking away the giant LED screens that shrouded the band and letting more of their faces come to the fore. “The first thing we all talked about was that they wanted to focus on the fact that they are a really great band and really fantastic musicians.”
The absence of the LED screens was also partially to do with the band and Rylander wanting to explore more sustainable ways of set design. So he formed a group called Redefine Design, where world-leading stage and lighting designers met fortnightly to share resources on sustainable materials, companies, and vendors. The house is therefore a modular system, which clips together and can be dismantled at any given opportunity. “Hopefully that system will take off and have a life of its own. We can inform other designers that it exists, and hopefully they can build beautiful things out of it, too.”
The stage is comprised of three sections: a cosy basement with warm wooden panelling, a more conventional ‘house’ in the middle, and then a sloped roof where Matty hoists himself up to belt his lungs out on ‘I Like America (And America Likes Me)’. The house’s interior was apparently inspired by the homes of Steven Spielberg: “He manages to put it in a rural area without a name, but everyone can relate to that childhood street.”
Such varying heights also play on the literal highs and lows of the band’s trajectory: “That describes a lot of his stage persona in terms of performing – very low and very high as well.”
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Yes, Matty Healy’s had some very controversial moments on and off tour this year, hasn’t he? Rylander’s insight into Healy’s stage antics seems to be limited: he tells me that “his stage performance is something that he keeps to himself and keeps developing.” Some controversial moments may have been plotted beforehand; was the raw meat ever discussed, for instance? “I’m sure it was!”
“Matthew keeps surprising me and in a very positive way. He’s always five steps ahead of me. I’ve had to learn to trust him as much as he needs to trust my decisions.”
At other times, Rylander is the one surprising Healy. Midway through the show, Healy slowly crawls into a TV, where he is literally consumed by the plethora of alt-right content that he watches. “Crawling in the TV was something I came up with. He didn’t know about it until he came to rehearsals. Then we kicked in the screen of the TV, and he was very pleasantly surprised.”
Rylander and Healy also share another trait in common: the two are furniture snobs, and share similar tastes. The props you see on stage were carefully selected not just for what they communicated, but for their beauty as well: “We appreciate quality, we wouldn’t put ugly objects on the stage.”
“We selected the furniture in terms of Matthew’s universe. We chose a sofa that we all agreed fit the campaign and looked beautiful. The same goes for the house – the references to the house is that it needs to be anyone’s house. By doing that, you need to exaggerate certain things to read on an arena stage: the windows need to be a bit bigger, and the doors and the perspective need to be a certain way. So all the sets and the props are picked by taste and beauty and that they communicate what they need to say.”
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This is especially true of props such as the TV, where its retro appearance was less to do with aesthetic and more to do with concept: “Having a bunch of flat-screens on a wall could have been interesting, but they don’t communicate crawling into a TV as much.”
Fans have done well to notice the Easter eggs that the band have laid out on stage, such as the lyric books representing each song on the setlist, or the ‘Sincerity is Scary’ hat that was once hung up in the background. But the set is reflexive and forever changing: everything from the pictures in the frames to the clothing on the rack can change at a moment’s notice, meaning that the props become much more mysterious…
“Something will happen on tour that triggers something in Matthew or the band, or someone’s family member might get sick and they bring a photo of them, or we’ll put a poster of the show on the wall in the house. People might recognise a hat on the coat rack from a music video and it might be from a song that they have not yet performed, but it might be a little Easter egg of what might come in.”
The first half of the setlist focuses on the band’s most recent album, ‘Being Funny in a Foreign Language’; the second half is a display of their greatest hits. Subtle details such as the wooden panelling is taken away to create a totally blank canvas, giving a more music video feel that allows for Rylander’s signature lighting.
“I think we have done such amazing work in keeping the visual identity of the songs intact,” he says proudly. “It’s really fun that when people see ‘Change of Heart’, they know it’s going to be turquoise and pink. With the monochromatic set, we can turn the whole world into that song for them for a couple of minutes.”
“One of the things I always tell the artist is that my goal with the design is that I want fans to be able to tell by the thumbnails on YouTube that it’s The 1975. That’s that song. And it’s this year. Just without reading, they will know.”
There’s still the North American tour for fans to catch the band; Rylander is tight-lipped on the details, but he tells me: “Definitely expect everything and beyond what you’ve seen before.”
On The 1975’s social media, there’s also a curious phrase that keeps popping up: ‘A Theatrical Performance of an Intimate Moment’. What can you tell us, Tobias? I practically grovel, please??
He gives a knowing grin. “With Matthew, there is thought behind everything…”
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Words: Alex Rigotti // @alex_rigatoni
Photography: Jordan Curtis Hughes
