{"id":96884,"date":"2022-10-14T12:21:58","date_gmt":"2022-10-14T12:21:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/the-1975-being-funny-in-a-foreign-language-review-a-surprising-but-welcome-paring-back-pop-and-rock\/"},"modified":"2022-10-14T12:21:58","modified_gmt":"2022-10-14T12:21:58","slug":"the-1975-being-funny-in-a-foreign-language-review-a-surprising-but-welcome-paring-back-pop-and-rock","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/the-1975-being-funny-in-a-foreign-language-review-a-surprising-but-welcome-paring-back-pop-and-rock\/","title":{"rendered":"The 1975: Being Funny in a Foreign Language review \u2013 a surprising but welcome paring back | pop and rock"},"content":{"rendered":"
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TO<\/span><\/span>arlier this year, the 1975, Britain’s most divisive arena-dwelling band, caused a minor ripple of controversy while announcing their fifth album. The problem wasn’t the very-online frontman Matty Healy’s shenanigans on Twitter \u2013 after quitting the app in 2020, he has since returned without a blue tick, but with a bio that reads \u201cdeleted once I’m verified\u201d \u2013 or the fact they had ditched the self-produced route of their previous work in favor of pop’s go-to producer, Jack Antonoff. The problem was the length of the record itself. News articles were cobbled together showing tweets from fans bemoaning the fact that Being Funny in a Foreign Language’s svelte 11-track, 43-minute run time is about half that of 2020’s sprawling Notes on a Conditional Form. \u201cIt’s so short nooooo\u201d ran one tweet.<\/span><\/p>\n

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<\/svg><\/span>The 1975: Being Funny in a Foreign Language album cover<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It’s shocking because, until now, the 1975 have revelled in pure excess. From their album titles (see 2016’s word count-defying I Like It When You Sleep, for You Are So Beautiful Yet So Unaware of It) to Healy’s convoluted and contradictory lyrics and paragraph-long interview quotes, everything that surrounds the band feels purposefully OTT . But excess is often commensurate with a lack of focus. Keen to reflect modern-day listening habits, the 1975’s recent listening output has rarely stuck to one genre \u2013 Notes on a Conditional Form careened between punk, house, garage, electronic noodling, likely the distant sound of a kitchen sink being mined for chords \u2013 while Healy’s ability to communicate the complexities of millennial life has meant his rapid-fire lyrics often arrived in inverted commas, lacquered in so much irony they existed only as catch-all slogans.<\/p>\n

While the technology-shy, primarily guitar-based Funny in a Foreign Language doesn’t exactly represent 33-year-old Healy mellowing out, it does highlight a shift in purpose. In a recent interview Healy confessed that after years of trying to capture everything, everywhere, all at once, here he was happy to scale it down: halting, as he put it, his search for the band’s magnum opus in favor of crafting a small -scale Polaroid. This pinhole focus underpins lead single Part of the Band, which eschews festival-headliner bombast in favorite of rustic minimalism. But, as with a Polaroid, details slowly make themselves known the longer you pay attention. the track’s campfire singalong, reminiscent of early Bon Iver, masks swirls of sonic detritus; snatches of studio chatter rise and fall, as do bubbles of electronics and burps of brass, while the momentum constantly splutters like the battered car on the album’s artwork. Lyrically, Healy crams in a typically layered assortment of high-wire neurosis and sharp self-assessment: \u201cAm I ironically woke? \/ The butt of my joke? \/ Or am I just some post-coke, average, skinny bloke \/ Calling his ego imagination? \u201d<\/p>\n

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