The 1975 return with their strongest album yet, littered with details, immaculate production and a fine line walked between poetry and pretension. Releases Editor Ewan Samms gives their thoughts.
Bad news. The new album by The 1975 is good. Quite good, like in an objective sense. I think it might even be their best, and you don’t understand how much I would love to hate it. It’s a deeply detailed, well-crafted and, frankly, smug effort from the four-piece. They’ve managed to incorporate all the elements of their past work that appealed to me, like the throwback hooks, immaculate engineering and verge-of-death pretentiousness, whilst binning off the aimless electronic passages and confused tracklist of their last album. Notes on a Conditional Form was a bloated mess, like a sink of dishwater littered with the best bits of a meal you enjoyed in the past, but now swimming amongst unspeakable filth. Being Funny in a Foreign Language trims almost 40 minutes off the runtime of Notes, and thus is the band’s most concise and direct effort yet. This past week, I learnt that the band have been together for twenty years, which begs the question, when will Matty Healy erupt in a ball of flame as all slightly evil people should? The Mancunian frontman is equal parts national treasure and morally puzzling embarrassment; one from which I can’t look away.
The album begins as all 1975 albums do, with the eponymously named opening track, (a great search engine optimisation tool, I must admit). This iteration of The 1975 features typical Healy-esque musings as the band warms up to an interpolation of LCD Soundsystem. Nice! Matty describes these openers as the band’s status updates where he ‘describe(s) the cultural, social, political environment (he’s) living in at that age,’ like some sort of all-seeing, all-knowing twink. It’s a pretty cool intro where the band lay out their instrumental tools, like lots of keyboards, and lots of strings, and lots of instruments in general actually.
The arrangements on Being Funny are huge. Massive. Take the early tracks, where Happiness gets you dancing a lonely jig to the tune of glitzy 80’s production, and Looking for Somebody to Love keeps you dancing, but swaps the loneliness for school shootings. (You can actually hear Bowie’s benevolent ghost shout, ‘let’s dance’, in the background of these tracks, nice detail guys). There’s countless keyboard layers and little jingles and percussion bits that keep the soundstage large and a joy to listen to.
"You can actually hear Bowie’s benevolent ghost shout, ‘let’s dance’, in the background of these tracks"
Don’t be fooled by the groovy introduction, Matty Healy continues to chat sh*t across this album, but for the first time in I think ever, I actually don’t mind it. Part of the Band was a sour tune to release first, but in context it works really well. Looking again at the Spotify notes Healy left for the album, he share’s that, ‘this song is (him) not afraid to be journalling’. I can’t believe I’m writing this, but Healy finally walks the line between poetry and pretension well. His writing here is much more measured and purposeful than on previous work, and whilst he still manages to say a lot, (like a lot), these passages are punctuated by moments of focused simplicity and gorgeous instrumental passages. This means that when my favourite nepotism pop star preaches about, ‘vaccinista tote bag chic baristas sitting east on their communista keisters’, it actually works really well. And I know everything about not only music but poetry, so I should know.
Oh Caroline and I’m In Love With You are ripping pop songs full of longing and adoration. In conversation with Zane Lowe, (it’s a richly sentimental interview, I would recommend checking it out), Healy shares that he wrote the latter single in preparation to smother it in a layer of ironic jokes and vague metaphors, (if it ain’t broke…), but instead challenged himself to be earnest. He’s right, for a man who simply says so many words, the more direct and honest sentiments of Being Funny in a Foreign Language hit really hard. Allow me to apologise on behalf of THE 1975 for making a significant contribution to wedding music with this album.
"he wrote the latter single in preparation to smother it in a layer of ironic jokes and vague metaphors, (if it ain’t broke…), but instead challenged himself to be earnest."
I know I can’t have favourites, but All I Need to Hear would be if it could be. Healy achieved his goal of writing a song that sounds like a cover, whilst including the original live take on the album. They truly captured a moment here. Wintering sees an addition to the Christmas music canon without the use of a jingle bell, bonus points! This track is littered with little quirks and details that really make it feel personal to Healy’s family, and thus makes me reflect on my similar familial details. I know I said I can’t have favourites, but I can most definitely have least favourites, since I make the rules, of which no one polices. Human Too is frankly, to use one of Matty’s favourite words, ‘cringe’. The chorus is so pandering it makes me want to smack my speaker when Heally hits the, ‘too’. The detailed recording is here, as it is across the whole album, but it proves that the other songs on Being Funny in a Foreign Language are sound in the songwriting department as well as the recording.
The album has a strong finish. About You makes me think about the ‘lore’ of The 1975, a part of the band, (pun intended and defended), that I’ve never really got. The clown character in the video for Change of Heart pops up in the video for I’m In Love With You, and About You is the musical continuation of an oldy but a goldy, Robbers. The production here is phenomenal; it sounds huge and spacious but is still a very close and laboured listen. A moment of true craftsmanship on the record.
The album closes in a comedown, with the soothingly soft When We Are Together. The finale features all the same tools as the rest of the album, but deploys them in a folky love song littered with great writing from the frontman. Humanistic references to cancelling and gaslighting nestle next to personally witty details of a first kiss in a car park and an all-time-great Healy-ism: ‘Central Park is Sea World for trees’. This closer leaves me reflective and satisfied, but still listening. Not for some kind of huge realisation or musing on life but engaged with the minutia of love and vignettes of living presented across the album. I return to the album title and pose that the foreign language Healy is supposedly being funny in across the record is that of earnestness and honesty, one he may not be fluent in, but is working on.
Ewan Samms
Edited by: Ewan Samms
Cover image and in-article image courtesy of The 1975 via instagram. In article video courtesy of The 1975 via YouTube.
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