I will admit upfront that I don’t quite know what to make of the 1975. Now three full-length albums into their career (with another promised within the next six months or so), not much music from the Manchester band has registered for me. I do, however, have an odd sense — developed in a cryptic fashion, since I haven’t particularly sought out information on them — of a certain braggadocio and penchant for counterproductive pontificating. Those qualities are issued to bands from their hometown, like inoculations from the National Health, but what I’m most reminded of was the rapid ascendance of the Strokes, who believed their own overjoyed press and then kept spinning the same legend of supremacy as the tailspin began. The comparison kept coming back to me as I listened to A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships, the latest from the 1975. The reason is simple: Like the Strokes, it turns out the 1975 can make a pretty terrific record.

What else A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships is or isn’t, it absolutely doesn’t lack for ambition. It is, plainly put, a lot. The music follows the general scheme of British pop that’s been in place for at least the past forty years, all post-disco electronic instrumentation and a precious elegance that would be cloying if it weren’t also so artfully irresistible. The 1975 don’t ramble and roam much within that territory, but it somehow feels like something notably new is coming with every track. It’s a little like a Major League Baseball pitcher only throwing fastballs and yet making such precise adjustments that every pitch looks different to the batter.

The opening of “How to Draw / Petrichor” is delicate enough to score a living fairy tale storybook, then the second half kicks in with skittering dance floor and it approaches the furtive fuss of the xx, not engaging exactly, but too complicated to dismiss. “Inside Your Mind” reaches all the way back to likes of China Crisis, and “It’s Not Living (If It’s Not with You)” like something Joe Jackson might have put onto Blaze of Glory or Laughter and Lust. “Love It If We Made It” is like Fine Young Cannibals recording OK Computer, at least if they were inclined to open a song by bellowing, “We’re fucking in a car, shooting heroin.” A instinct to indulgence can sometimes get the better of them. “The Man Who Married a Robot / Love Theme,” a modern lingo version of one of King Missile’s story songs, is amusing once, and then it immediately transforms into a road anvil in the middle of the album. Much more often, the 1975 balance their ambition with offhand brilliance, as on “I Always Wanna Die (Sometime),” which is restrained and majestic all at once.

Much as I enjoy A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships, I have a suspicion its charms might wither. It’s reminiscent of a number of albums I remember — albeit vaguely — from my college radio days. They were instantly thrilling in their expansiveness and energy, but their glimmer faded over time until they were a little old intense crushes that were a little embarrassing in retrospect. That might not be the actual result in this instance, but even that impression strikes me as wholly appropriate. Sometimes beautiful music doesn’t last forever.