The 1975 – Being Funny in a Foreign Language

Whether it's reinvention or simply revisitation, The 1975 strip things back to basics to present one of their most complete records to date

Album Review by Dylan Tuck | 12 Oct 2022
  • The 1975 - Being Funny In a Foreign Language
Album title: Being Funny in a Foreign Lanuage
Artist: The 1975
Label: Dirty Hit
Release date: 14 Oct

Across four expansive, genre-bending, and deeply soul-searching albums, it’d seem that The 1975 have tried almost everything. After their last album, Notes On a Conditional Form – an eccentric genre-tasting menu that mashed delicate flavours of garage, punk, country, shoegaze, pop, and electronica together on a 22-track plate – just what on earth could come next?

The answer is their shortest record to date (at just 11 tracks and 43 minutes long) and strips things back to basics. Written with the constant of creating live, organic performances at its heart, Being Funny in a Foreign Language is a triumphant embrace of the soundscapes that made the quartet such a Tumblr-era success, twinned with the know-how of a band that has spent the last two decades by each other’s side.

Flamboyant ecstasy and subtle simplicity exist in tandem, alternating between the sheer bliss found on tracks like the jazz-pop wonder Happiness, the 80s-drenched numbers Looking For Somebody (To Love) and Oh Caroline, or the career-high euphoric single I'm In Love With You, placed alongside the stripped-back lucidity of the Elbow-like folk-rock number Part of the Band or the gentle ballad All I Need To Hear. Wintering, a Christmas song intended for their Drive Like I Do project, and the gorgeously hazy About You tread that line delicately, feeling particularly nostalgic to an earlier incarnation of The 1975 while still retaining their modern sense of grandeur.

Lyrically, having already asked so many big questions surrounding the climate crisis, online relationships, and technology’s impact on our lockdown brains, they instead seek real, intimate conversations on the theme of love. I’m In Love With You expresses joy at an all-encompassing romance, Happiness on its uncertainness, Oh Caroline on love's darker, all-encompassing nature, while When We Are Together bemoans mistakes made in relationships. Still, despite his more personal reflections, Matty Healy’s observations remain unparalleled, laced with charisma and comedic nuance. Much of his lyrics are jokingly inward-looking, from examining the makeup of his ego to simply having a shit time at a family Christmas. 

At times, Being Funny... recollects the teenage jubilance of their debut, at others the pizzazz and expansive glam-pop of I Like It When You Sleep…, while other moments recollect the grand, reverb-drenched ballads of A Brief Enquiry Into Online Relationships. Being Funny... serves not only as a reflective and refined record, but a showcase of The 1975's almighty journey to their peak, and how much they still have to offer.

Listen to: Happiness, I'm In Love With You, Looking For Somebody (To Love), About You

http://the1975.com