Being Funny In A Foreign Language

They’ve returned with an album that feels far from the all-encompassing anxiety of their previous records, prioritizing the unity and spirit that all four members feel for each other. ... Sometimes, it’s enough to peel back the layers of old paint and put on a fresh coat. The colors may be a bit jumbled at a first glance, but when you take a step back, they’re vivid, pleasant, magnetic.

Healy has smartly introduced a measure of restraint, but it wouldn’t be a 1975 album without his idiosyncratic discursions; these songs, sturdy melodic creations at their core, are all the better for it.

The songs click almost immediately, but they’re subtler and pricklier than a first listen would imply, with unexpected twists like faint spoken-word samples and odd bits of distortion on guitar and piano. And the 1975 uses these textures more tastefully than much of the music that inspired them.

Fifth time around, The 1975 get the equation right: pop first, art later.

Being Funny is as sincere as the 1975 have ever sounded, and also as hopeful. Without the thematic discursions and stylistic detours of past records, Healy’s glamorous love songs finally take center stage, their message as convincing as ever.

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. ... Thankfully, it’s not all about painstakingly peeling the lyrical onion. I’m in Love With You is the band at their most joyously straightforward.

With Being Funny in a Foreign Language, Healy and the 1975 do seem to have matured, confidently jumping off the ropes and back into the center of the pop music ring.

With Being Funny In A Foreign Language, they reassert themselves at the forefront of 2020s pop-rock, fusing together the textures and musical ideas of soft-rock hits from three decades ago with modern sensibilities in a way that sounds instantly familiar, yet distinctively of-the-moment.

There is something strangely satisfying about its consistency and confidence. Have no doubts, ‘Being Funny…’ is most certainly still The 1975; they’ve just refined their pop nous that little bit more this time around.

Combining the band’s slightly sidelined knack for writing huge, immediately memorable pop bangers with the more complex, neurotic lyrical voice of The 1975’s more recent releases, ‘Being Funny In A Foreign Language’ feels like the right next step after pushing experimental excess to its logical conclusion.

‘Being Funny In A Foreign Language’, like most of their projects, has something for everyone, but this time does stay in one lane – and that’s for the better.

Perhaps, but there do seem to be less of them these days, and Being Funny In A Foreign Language represents a gradual, encouraging maturation for the band.

On Being Funny in a Foreign Language, the lyrics remain flippant. The instrumentals are gone. On the following 10 tracks, you can feel Antonoff taking over to guide the band’s more straightforward pop songs. ... It’s the 2022 Antonoff playlist it was crafted to be. It’ll make a lot of people happy. It sounds like it made the band happy too.

Despite a more liberal use of string sections this time out, Funny sounds like another album made by the 1975.