The 1975 April 2023

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After four studio albums, there's not much territory The 1975 hasn't covered at this point. Throughout their tenure as a band, the English rockers have flirted with glossy pop, anarchist punk, gritty garage rock, electro-funk and country. They've used their incisive songwriting to ask existential questions surrounding self-discovery, nihilism, climate change, mental health, addiction, post-modernism and cybersex. So what's a band to do when they've seemingly done it all? After 20 years together, The 1975 decided it was time for a return to form-a way to celebrate their beginnings and showcase their growth. The result is their fifth effort Being Funny in a Foreign Language-perhaps the band's most intimate sounding record yet.

After two years in a pandemic where technology was a means to cope with isolation, the world-and the band themselves-seemed to be searching for raw moments. Being Funny tries to do just that, grappling with love and loss in the post-internet age. 'I feel like people are craving things that are remarkable that require as little technology as possible,' says bandleader Matty Healy.

While The 1975's past few records were brimming with massive production-programming and synths- Being Funny is rooted in performance. 'We wanted it to capture the performance of all of us, allowing people to be a witness to a moment as opposed to a witness to some constructs.' As a result, it's much of a departure from the maximalism of their last record Notes on a Conditional Form. 'This album, more so than Notes, is a follow-up to A Brief Inquiry. There were conversations about whether it was literally a part two or something like that, but it was very much his own beast by the end.'
This event is all ages.