Foals – Total Life Forever
Foals have always seemed like the band that couldn’t really care about the mainstream no matter how hard publications like the NME tried to push them towards it. They’re a band who released a debut album (Antidotes) that didn’t have any of the two singles that got them fans in the first places (Hummer and Mathletics) and also remixed it themselves after complaining that their producer made it sound like it was ‘recorded in the Grand Canyon.’ That’s an ever bolder statement to make when you realise that Dave Sitek, producer to the indie stars, was the man accused of crimes against music production. Despite their best attempts, Antidotes became well-received and even did well in the charts.
Two years on, Foals return with Total Life Forever, which cynics would certainly call their attempt to break into the big league. It sounds like a major contradiction when you consider the band’s brief past but on first listen you might find it hard to disagree. Their second album is certainly more expansive than ever before and their is certainly more room for vocalist Yannis Philippakis’ lyrics to breathe and worm their way into your subconscious. They are, in essence, the hallmarks of a band desperate to hit Coldplay-levels of superstardom. A few more listens, however, reveals a much different story.
Yes, their lead single This Orient sounds like a festival anthem in-waiting with a chorus that goes off at such a frenetic pace you can’t help but pictures images of masses of hipsters jumping up and down (awkwardly, mind, they are hipsters after all) in a muddy field. But it’s also much cleverer than you expect it to be – the rhythm section is far more complex than most big league bands put together and the jerky sounding guitars stop the song from going overboard into the territory known as ‘big and bland’.
To be honest, Total Life Forever feels like a much more measured record than Antidotes. It feels like the work of a band who had a clear goal and did it in a very precise manner. How else would you expect the calming tones of Alabaster came about? How else do you explain the more soulful elements of the record like the opening warm vocals to Blue Blood? How else do you explain as to why they made such a stonking album highlight in Spanish Sahara? That track in particular, regardless of whether this album turned out to be good or not, will probably go down as one of the tracks of 2010. It starts up as a whisper, bubbles and teases a bit, nervously withdraws and then decides to just let go without a care in the world with one glorious emotional release.
Pointless interlude aside (this will the reverb-drenched piano chords of Fugue), Total Life Forever feels like a step in the right direction for a band that at one stage in their career refused to go in the direction they were constantly urged to go down in the manner of a stubborn young child. You may have laughed at them at the time for essentially ditching Dave Sitek and being pretentious enough to not include popular songs on their debut, but who’s laughing now?
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Posted on May 17th, 2010 by Max
Filed under: Albums, Reviews
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