FOALS – Antidotes
Posted by AlMachine on Tuesday, April 29, 2008


Every year in-between the period where “We Wish You A Merry Christmas” and “Auld Lang Syne” become the musical staple diets of choice, the music industry bestows itself by predicting via its most salubrious methods of media-enforced mass marketing which of its most recent signings are about to enjoy a lucrative next twelve months. Last year it was the turn of Klaxons, and despite one or two bum notes courtesy of the live shows along the way, most of you I’m sure would agree the hype machine got it right for a change. This year it’s the turn of Foals, a band who’ve been bubbling under the surface for a couple of years now without ever really making that much of a distinctive impression. You’ve probably heard the ‘Hummer’ and ‘Mathletics’ singles at Rescued! or indeed any similarly themed indie club night up-and-down the land; you’re also quite likely to have seen their cameo on Channel 4’s ‘Skins’, something which the band have since categorically disowned, even though this was undoubtedly the moment where Foals made the transition from scenester and web-blog favourites to genuine contenders, snaring the 14 and over brigade away from their Wombats and Enemy CDs for a few precious moments.

Chances are, however, that you won’t have heard the band’s limited edition first single, ‘Try This On Your Piano’, an expansive, largely instrumental offering that offered very little in terms of originality that a thousand other formative post-rock acts hadn’t done previously or gave little indication as to where the band were heading next.

Admittedly, they may have lost one fairly key member since then but as the saying goes, “one swallow doesn’t make a summer”, and by the same token, for one band to change their image and sound so drastically to something that is essentially the commercial fodder of the day…well, exactly.

Forget all the musings about what Foals may listen to in their spare time, or on the tour bus; Citing the likes of Don Caballero, Maps & Atlases and Q And Not U is all very well, but don’t be fooled by the impressively worded PR campaign; ‘Antidotes’ exists purely on the basis of two records, Bloc Party’s ‘Silent Alarm’ and The Rapture’s ‘Echoes’, and whether or not the band choose to admit to it or not, the same people who bought both of those records are going to be the same ones who will buy into this.

That’s not to say ‘Antidotes’ is a bad record as such; it isn’t, but don’t let London’s market-savvy hype masters co you into thinking its some kind of ground-breaking statement from the underground attempting to subvert the mainstream either. Foals, you see, are essentially one-trick ponies in their delivery. 4/4 guitars over similarly-stated Casio keyboards, rhythms almost identical to the first Bloc Party records not to mention singer Yannis Philippakis’ propensity to repeat the same phrase over and over, in pretty much every song, a la Kele Okereke in the likes of ‘Helicopter’, ‘She’s Hearing Voices’ et al.

What this record does possess however, is a slightly more adventurous nature in that it is unashamedly a dance record played by a guitar-based band, and for that oversight alone, at least half the songs here will cross over to mainstream clubs as floor-fillers before 2008 draws to a close. The band should also be credited for not relying too heavily on the record’s aforementioned preceding singles, even if nothing here quite matches the uptempo rhythms of ‘Hummer’ or genuine thrill of ‘Mathletics’.

The most worrying aspect of ‘Antidotes’ is that the record is entirely predictable, particularly to anyone who may have witnessed Foals in the flesh recently, and doesn’t really auger well as their next move.

Unless we were to be really cynical and advise them to wait for the next big musical scene to develop of course…Until then, ‘Antidotes’ is a bit like tucking the profiteroles after the pheasant main course at a dinner (or should that say Bloc?) party – a nice filler, but too stodgy to finish, and not a patch on the initial dish of the day.

6/10

Dom Gourlay



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