Behind Foals’ deadpan stare – the one that tells you the Oxford quintet need to be taken seriously – it’s easy to believe there’s a playful side. One that has the band falling about laughing every time they play a show and convince the...
Let’s play a game of word association. Think of Foals and what comes to mind? Artsy, difficult, oblique, precocious, intelligent, volatile, mathletic. The Oxford group’s albums to date – 2008’s ‘Antidotes’ and 2010’s ‘Total Life...
The other week I saw Foals play 'My Number', their new single and the second song we've heard so far from their forthcoming third album 'Holy Fire', live in Bournemouth in front of a couple of hundred people. The only opportunity these people had...
Foals’ idiosyncratic way of warming up for new album ‘Holy Fire’ is a tour of towns they’ve rarely had cause to visit, playing venues about a tenth of the size they’d normally fill. We’ve missed them, the contrary buggers. Filing...
German record label !K7 have been running their DJ-Kicks series since 1995, giving artists, producers and DJs (DUH!) the chance to showcase the music they love. Four Tet did one. Kode9 did one. Gold Panda did one. They were ace. Then, in 2008, !K7...
Foals - 'Total Life Forever' (Warner Bros)
Pity Foals . All they ever wanted was a steady supply of Rizlas and to play weird music. Unfortunately they wrote a couple of songs some kids enjoyed dancing to, but then had the temerity to follow them with an excellent, underrated debut that...
10 Tracks You Have To Hear This Week (6/03/10)
1. Foals – ‘Spanish Sahara’ You know Foals, right? HIghbrow, twitchy Oxonian math-poppers? Well, prepare to unknow them. In the ‘Sea Within A Sea’ school of odd comebacks, this taste of new album ‘Total Life Forever’, out May 10,...
Live Review: Foals/Two Door Cinema/Wet Paint
There’s a short alien gimp onstage below a railway arch. Poured into silver Lycra, the thing grabs a mic and starts making noise from its foodhole. “Oooeeeoooh,” it breathes. “Eeeeeeiiiiaaaaoh!” Four dudes in T-shirts tumble into view,...
The dressing room says it all, really. A mixture of Bacchanalian debauchery (mojitos, grapes, buckets of booze, champagne, vodka smoothies) and kids’ birthday decorations (party poppers, inflatable microphones, transfer tattoos), it’s a room...
Shorn of all its insular, middle-of-the-album tension, ‘Olympic Airways’ reveals itself to be more of a slow-burning anthem than ‘Balloons’, ‘Cassius’ or even ‘Red Socks Pugie’. Gripped by its subtle desperation for an escape from...
