Old Posts #1: Foals

On paper, U.K. sensations the Foals look like one of the worst ideas ever conceived, a head-on collision of empty indie-rock signifiers (shout-y British vocals, flailing new wave rhythms, chipping, minimal, post-punk guitars) that are, at this point, well-worn to the point of insignificance. Furthermore, Antidotes, their debut, was, kinda, produced by TV On The Radio mastermind and seeming hired-gun producer David Sitek (I'll get to why I say "kinda" in a bit) , a guy who, while I dearly love TV On The Radio, has produced, otherwise, indie rockers that I've never really got the appeal of (The Liars and Celebration, for example) and features the Antibalas horns, another band I've never really understood, on several tracks.

But, somehow, Antidotes has become one of my favourite albums of the, admittedly young, year and I think its due to something that I like to call the "Franz Ferdinand effect". If you'll indulge me; this effect refers to something that I believe several bands, the most prominent of which is Franz Ferdinand, do very well, which is to streamline, and graft strong pop hooks on to, post-punk/new wave musical elements which would otherwise not work for me. The Foals do this supremely well and with weirder musical elements than Franz Ferdinand themselves ever mined. I referred to post-punk and new wave earlier but that's only part of the equation for the Foals whose spastic, busy, rhythms owe quite a bit to math rock, a genre that, with a few exceptions, puts me off with its technically-minded attitude towards music, and whose use of the Antibalas horns allies them, at least slightly, with afrobeat, which I do like, but only in moderation. However, its the way that the Foals digest these influences, much as Franz Ferdinand does with spastic new wave, that makes them work, their rhythms are busy but not especially technical and, critically, they always have swing and movement to them. Furthermore, the horns are deployed sparingly, usually as texture in the songs' codas or as neat stabs of rhythmic attack in a chorus. In fact, the only song on Antidotes which I don't like is its first one, "The French Open", which is both the song where the horns are most fully used and the most math-rock of the album's tunes, it's overly complex and doesn't really go anywhere.

More to the point, though, "The French Open" isn't very catchy which is something the Foals excel at. All of the other tunes on Antidotes have at least one memorable hook or chorus but, importantly, they're never "big" hooks, like an 80's power ballad, but rather slight phrases or guitar lines that stick in your mind. Part of why these songs work so well is that the production on the album isn't overly fussy or bombastic, something that a lot of indie-rock types, in hopes of being the next Arcade Fire, are beginning to indulge in, leading me to my point about David Sitek. Sitek was originally contracted to produce this album, and his name remains in the credits, but the band, unhappy with his production as it "sounded like it was recorded in the Grand Canyon", remixed it before the album shipped and, though I sort of want to hear what Sitek had planned, it seems to have made the album better. There's no detailing, beyond the horns, to these songs, just a bright, in-your-face, guitar-bass-drums set-up that works because of its clear, immediate kick. In fact, the only song here where that isn't the case is, once again, "The French Open", which has overly reverb-laden drums which lessen the song's impact, if that's what Sitek's mixes for the entire album sounded like then the band made the right choice by doing some extra studio muddling.

Antidotes isn't perfect, it runs a little too long, there's no real variety and it comes off more as a collection of songs than an album, but it's the rare album that justifies its pre-release hype with strong songs and I think that's something that everyone can get behind.