Then you obviously haven't heard Foals before. Oxford's favourite purveyors of house party-friendly, indie dance fun have been as big a hit with the critics as they have with the kids, many of whom will have witnessed their 2007 appearance on E4's Skins, their organic fusion of pulsing, finger-tapping guitars and intricately-concocted polyrhythms separating them from the swarm of floppy-fringed indie hipsters that has swept, mercilessly, over the UK in recent years. Not since the emergence of Bloc Party has a band so excited the industry, and the no.3 UK Album Chart placing of 2008's Dave Sitek-produced debut, Antidotes, proved that their was commercial gold to be mined in originality as well as cult obsession; the future of music is in as fine a fettle as it has been thus far in the 21st-Century.
Foals, signed to Transgressive Records in the UK with Sub Pop supplying to demand stateside, are commended for keeping it real up to this point; trademark house party gigs carried on from their formative days right up to the release of Antidotes - but if they are really to be the pioneering force they have the creative and productive capacity to be, they will need to emulate the efforts of their Oxford-spawned predecessors, Radiohead, and take their tunes to the masses. This would be the thought behind forthcoming sophomore record, Total Life Forever, which promises a more mature Foals than witnessed on the raw and naively-constructed Antidotes. Foals were criticised for underestimating the effect of their sheer, energetic and intimate live shows on their sharp ascent to popularity, leading to an underwhelming first studio album. While Antidotes was most probably the album of the year in 2008, bar perhaps the efforts of MGMT, it in no way lived up to the frenetic hype which preceded its release. Following a two year touring spree, Foals return with slightly less weight on their shoulders - the result thus far having been two incredibly different and individually standout singles, both of which might be said to represent Foals on a gentle, weed trip as opposed to the breakneck speed rush of their previous full-length.
Similarly to the previous torch-bearers of good music in the indie-rock bracket, Bloc Party, Foals have settled down for their second album; the nervous, pressurised tensions which fuelled their jumpy, ultra-danceable first record have slackened and the foot has been taken off the accelerator pedal, but where Bloc Party delivered what was essentially a subdued, more adult version of Silent Alarm with successive album A Weekend In The City, Foals appear to have managed to branch even further out into the infinite sonic spectrum with Total Life Forever (or so early signs suggest); their appetite for experimentation and their drive for perfection has only escalated with the success of their initial full-length, whereas Bloc Party's legs were so tired after Silent Alarm and its buildup that they decided to record A Weekend In The City whilst sat in armchairs instead. Criticism of one of Britain's few quality bands of the current era may seem unfounded and brutal, but it is equally useful in emphasising the unattainable promise of Foals. What the current state of the music industry seems to lose in originality and eccentricity through the bizarrely perverted disneyfication of pre-pubescent "talent" - think Justin Bieber, Hannah Montana, etc. - it is beginning to gain again and more through an ever-expansive generation of youth willing to dig hard and deep to scratch the surface. And I'm not talking about myspace here, this is about the surge in gig tickets sold for 14+ concerts, the correlating mini-revival of the physical release and the slow-but-steady descent of illegal downloading, not to mention the artists themselves beginning to step up to the plate and act creatively and inventively to proliferate their music to the masses. If the musically bored kid was Andy Dufresne, the yardage of shit they would have to crawl through right now to come out on the other side might be twice as long as it has ever been - but, for any kid willing to crawl through the shit, the prize too is sweeter than ever. The independent music revolution is on its way at last, and bands with the intellectual invention and humble, personal capacities that match those of Foals will be the ones to lead it. All eyes now rest on May 12th, when it's fair to say the biggest, most important and most influential record in the last five years will be released in the UK - as it goes in the already-iconic lead single, "Spanish Sahara", "It's future rust, it's future dust".
Jacob Mier//
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