- Foals can write a rock n’ roll song that will make you denounce religion.
First single Exits, pulled from their forthcoming fifth studio album Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost Part 1, is testament to that. Coming down like an auditory hammer, frontman Yannis Philappakis' pack-a-day vocals shepherd an apocalyptic sonic narrative that blisters and blooms like a radioactive lotus.
White Onions is a ceaseless, building warcry and recalls the knotted, anxious guitar work that characterised Foals’ debut album. Immediately following, comes the neatly juxtaposed In Degrees - a contagious, bodacious '90’s club banger.
Much like how Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost is split in two parts (part two expected in Spring 2019), select tracks on part 1 can be broken into chapters. Listeners are able to discern definitive points where songs ricochet into freeform jam-like swells. Like an experimental epilogue, these extensions frame a more self assured band. Recurring sonic threads weave in and out of focus. The duality foreshadows record number two and has me bristling for the follow up before the last note of part one even rings out.
From the pulsating bass line that opens Syrups, the track gradually surges to a dissonant, claustrophobic, guitar driven climax, before suddenly switching gears, only to be cut short by the rhythmic bleating of a synth, like an alarm, as if to pull you from their frenzied fever dream.
Second to last cut Sunday’s ringing guitars and orchestral swells are reminiscent of 2015’s A Knife In The Ocean, a passing observation only reinforced by Philipakkis’ soaring yowls into the void.
There are nods to the jittery adolescence of Antidotes, the stadium rock harnessed on Holy Fire and hints of the visceral longing which punctuated Total Life Forever but Foals aren’t here to get tripped up by tired old platitudes. They shied away from an outside hire: production duties are handled in-house, allowing for maybe the first unadulterated taste of Foals we’ve ever experienced. Foals can write a rock n roll song that will make you denounce religion, hell they wrote ten, but at this point they’re preaching to the converted.
- Fiona Priddey.