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Notes on a Conditional Form is the fourth studio album by English band the 1975. It was released on 22 May 2020 by Dirty Hit and Polydor Records. Initially titled Music for Cars, the album was intended as the follow-up to I Like It When You Sleep, for You Are So Beautiful yet So Unaware of It (2016). It later came to denote an era spanning two albums. The first, A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships, released in November 2018. The band recorded much of the second album in London, Los Angeles, Sydney, Northamptonshire and in a mobile studio on their tour bus. The album faced several delays and was submitted only weeks before the onset of the global COVID-19 pandemic.

A maximalist experimental album, Notes on a Conditional Form has a free-flowing structure composed of conventional songs, classical orchestral interludes and ambient electronic instrumentals. The album contains loose song structures characterised by their stream of consciousness deliveries, neo-noir ambience, downcast string arrangements, melancholic orchestral flourishes and sudden contrasts. Guest contributors to the album include Phoebe Bridgers, FKA Twigs, Cutty Ranks, climate change activist Greta Thunberg, and Matty Healy's father, Tim.

Notes on a Conditional Form incorporates numerous genres, combining house, UK garage and various electronic music subgenres with guitar-based acoustic folk, emo, country and multiple rock music subgenres. Thematically, the album focuses on the intricacies of human existence and uses introspection, retrospection, self-reflection and straightforward storytelling. It explores themes of isolation, uncertainty and anxiety, inspired by Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold and Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska. The album's lyrics provide a deconstruction of Healy's extroverted persona, with several reviewers regarding it as the 1975's most personal record.

Music
Musically, Being Funny in a Foreign Language is built around a connective sonic theme of 1980s pop music. In contrast to the experimental soundscapes of A Brief Enquiry into Online Relationships (2018) and Notes on a Conditional Form (2020), which "delved and darted around sonic influences like a musical pinball machine" according to Sarah Jamieson of DIY, the album adopts a streamlined, restrained and stripped-back approach.

which "flipped between genres incessantly" as stated by Joe Taysom of Far Out,

Eschewing the musical excess and multi-genre explorations present on A Brief Enquiry into Online Relationships (2018) and Notes on a Conditional Form (2020), Being Funny in a Foreign Language is built upon a sonic theme of 1980s pop music.

Musically, Being Funny in a Foreign Language fuses various genres and instruments, characterised by the use of "smooth" saxophones, "fluttering" arrangements, electropop instrumentation, brass and synthpop chords, orchestral flourishes and a pronounced emphasis on acoustic guitars, while incorporating elements of funk, New Wave, art pop and indie rock.


 * Paolo Raguso of Consequence wrote that the album is "less interested in conducting the soundtrack to the apocalypse and much more engaged in the quieting grey area of [Notes on a Conditional Form]", comparing the incorporation of funk music to I Like It When You Sleep, for You Are So Beautiful yet So Unaware of It and The 1975.
 * Dylan Tuck of The Skinny described Being Funny in a Foreign Language as akin to the 1975's first three albums where "flamboyant ecstasy and subtle simplicity exist in tandem", writing that the album recalls the "teenage jubilance" of The 1975, the "pizzazz and expansive glam-pop" of I Like It When You Sleep, for You Are So Beautiful yet So Unaware of It and the "grand, reverb-drenched" ballads of A Brief Enquiry into Online Relationships.
 * Nick Hasted of The Arts Desk described the album's sound as "[the 1975] settling down; of arriving at their destination, and admitting what they are".

Themes and lyrics

 * Tuck commented that Being Funny in a Foreign Language eschews the 1975's prior explorations of "big questions" such as climate change, online relationships and the psychological effects of technology on society during the COVID-19 pandemic. Instead, Tuck described the album's central theme as the exploration of love, expressed lyrically through "intimate" conversations composed of Healy's personal reflections and outward observations, which the writer described as introspective containing a nuanced comedic undertone.

Songs

 * "The 1975" incorporates staccato pianos. Healy utilises a conversational rap flow at the start of the song, delivering lyrics in a stream of consciousness style, before the track ends in "warm, Mike Post-style" strings.
 * "Happiness" is a jazz-pop song that explores the uncertainty of love. It contains elements of soul.
 * "Looking for Somebody (To Love)" is a 1980s-influenced synth-pop song.
 * "Oh Caroline" is a 1980s-influenced song that discusses the darker, all-encompassing nature of love.
 * "Part of the Band" is a stripped-back folk-rock song.
 * "All I Need To Hear" is a country-soul ballad that incorporates a steel guitar and gospel piano in its instrumentation.
 * "Wintering" is a Christmas song intended for a shelved Drive Like I Do project.
 * Healy sings in his falsetto in "Human Too".
 * "About You" blends shoegaze and pop music.
 * Lyrically, "When We Are Together" expresses regret over mistakes made during a relationship.

Critical response
Tuck gave Being Funny in a Foreign Language a perfect five-star review, praising the album's stripped-back nature and calling it a "reflective and refined record... a showcase of the 1975's almighty journey to their peak".