Foals
Antidotes
****
New
Year, new hyped band, this year that honour goes to Foals. The
Oxford five piece caused a stir with limited singles ‘Hummer’
and ‘Mathletics’ last year and stepped into the
realms of ‘cool’ by appearing in a mini-episode
of Skins – you could cut the anticipation for the debut
album with a knife.
Eight
months on, Foals are finally ready to deliver. Opener ‘The
French Open’ is instantly recognisable as the sound of
Foals and sees them out in full force, highlighting the bands
quirkiness as lead singer Yannis Philippakis yelps out the words
of an old LaCoste advert.
This is quickly followed by the album’s lead single ‘Cassius’,
a fantastic piece of indie-disco, which will no doubt fill the
dance-floors in the months to come and is likely to become the
song that we most associate with the band.
Highlights
later on include the 80’s electro-esque ‘Olympic
Airways’ and the bizarre but upbeat ‘Like Swimming’.
The album continues over 11 slices of musical algebra carefully
worked out through a series of beats and riffs.
Once it all ends you’ll want to double check your sums
to see if you come up with the same answers again. It is likely
you won’t as Antidotes will throw up something new on
each listen.
The
band may have decided to leave ‘Hummer’ and ‘Mathletics’
off the album, but the likes of ‘Balloons’ and ‘Cassius’
easily make up for it. But those expecting a run of skew-whiff,
complex dance numbers to fill uber-hip indie parties will be
disappointed. True the incessant dancey-edge is present throughout,
but Antidotes contains the depth and musical inventiveness to
set Foals out from the quagmire of indie-medocrity.
Still the bands undeniable repetitiveness can be a little draining
on the soul and after 11 slices of funky, math-rock a little
variation seems like a very welcome addition to the listening
experience.
Antidotes is an album that will divide opinion, which might
see Foals being dismissed as the latest trend band, but that
dismissal would be wrong as Foals are one of the most complex
and interesting rock bands to break into the mainstream in recent
times and for that alone they deserve to be applauded.
by
Guy Halford
