The 1975 were the dominant British band of the 2010s, excruciatingly self-aware singer Matty Healy the man that best articulated the exhausting everything-now maximalism of Millennial life. In a new decade, after a faltering fourth album that was so sprawling and unfocused that getting through all of its 22 songs felt way too much like work, it’s possible Healy has finally worked out how to quieten down.
Finished with the self-absorbed tedium of heroin addiction and no longer on Twitter after one too many semi-cancellations, he’s been learning jujitsu at home and buying literary ephemera. Being Funny in a Foreign Language, a skill which he says is his idea of ultimate sophistication, is half the size of its messy 2020 predecessor, with each song earning its place. Working for the first time with one of the world’s most in-demand producers, Jack Antonoff of Taylor Swift and Lana Del Rey fame, must also have helped to keep things tight. Together they avoided computers more than usual and recorded their instruments with less post-production polish.
In the first half, the sound is still busy, with a slick Eighties glossiness that will already be familiar. Happiness culminates in a shiny saxophone solo. There’s a light Miami Vice funkiness to Oh Caroline. Looking for Somebody (To Love) couldn’t be catchier, with a chorus in search of a John Hughes film.
And Healy still delights in lines that prompt a double-take. The first song on every 1975 album is always titled The 1975 and sets the tone for what will follow. Last time, on Notes on a Conditional Form, it featured Greta Thunberg making a speech about the climate crisis. Here, matters are brought quickly to base level, with Healy singing: “I’m feeling apathetic after scrolling through hell/I think I’ve got a boner but I can’t really tell.”
He also packs Part of the Band, the first single, with startling lyrics, somehow finding enough space around the scratchy cello for the line: “I know some vaccinista tote bag chic baristas sitting in east on their communista keisters writing about their ejaculations.” But elsewhere, there’s a surprising simplicity. I’m in Love With You is a vibrant pop song no more complex in its message than its title. One harmonica solo could turn All I Need to Hear into an all-out country ballad. It’s a beauty, as is the dreampop blur of About You. For once, here’s a 1975 album that leaves the listener wanting more.
