Foals – 'Antidotes' review
Shut up for a minute, everyone. Seriously. Listen. This is very important. Did you know that some bands are a bit rubbish, but still shift thousands of records that cynically appeal to the masses? Did you know that? And these bands put their tunes on adverts for cash? And some of them are more interested in the sex and drugs and clothes than making worthwhile, serious, challenging music? Did you know that?
Actually, you probably did. It was ever thus. But you’re probably even more acutely aware of pop music’s most enduring schism if Yannis from Foals has managed to get into your line of sight in the last couple of months. Never mind the pulse-quickening brilliance of his band’s early singles or the gazillion nominations as “ones to watch in 2008” – what you need to know about Foals is that they don’t fuck about. They’re not like the rest. They are more 4 REAL than Richey Manic’s bloody left arm. They mean it, man, and don’t you forget it. Theirs is serious music for serious times made with serious intent by serious people.
And, actually, why not? After all, a lack of gags hasn’t harmed the careers of, say, Radiohead or Bloc Party, or even Underworld, and if you can pull off the intense/detached/beautiful thing, it’s a powerful manifesto to have – and there are one or two moments on Antidotes that do that brilliantly.
Unfortunately, the first of those moments comes after three songs of entirely loveless stodge. But Olympic Airways is worth the wait: tender, slightly melancholic but still frenetic and twitchy, the track has a composure that the preceding three lacked and, most importantly, it translates the ever-present seriousness into subtle beauty. The vocals are timid, breathy and hopeful, while the climax is a step removed from the expected. It’s the clever, well-conceived and original pop music that Yannis so often talks of making.
Electric Bloom is equally arresting. Chilling guitar chimes and fidgety percussion sit over the kind of soundscape that Boards of Canada spend years constructing, while the vocals and guitars steer the track just the right side of epic. Again, it’s interesting, original pop that is all the better for its determination to be “proper” music.
But then it’s back to the loveless um-cha-um-cha of afrobeaty new-rave that has little to commend it, and stays that way until Big Big Love, the penultimate track, which offers a warmth, humanity and complexity that is so disappointingly absent elsewhere. Cracked drum rolls glitch through its six minutes underneath a sedate bass line, and the same rise-and-fall compositional tricks do their job elegantly.
But three lovely songs do not a decent album make, and the surrounding filler drifts by anonymously with good ingredients but no real recipe to bind them. So often, cleverness and technical expertise abound at the expense of sensitivity or compassion, and plenty of attempts at coiled-spring punk-funk, Gang of Four aggression and Warpian indie-bleep disappoint.
The opening track on Antidotes, sung in French, is called The French Open – it’s the nearest Foals get to a joke, and therein lies the problem: Foals aren’t joking. They are very serious indeed.
6/10)
