Foals - The math-pop colts of the charts

Starting from a shared love of math-rock, Oxford's Foals devised and perfected an angular yet irresistible brand of indie rock that would go on to carry intricate rhythms and complex structures into the charts. A recipe that's both cerebral and easy listening, one that won over the indie generation of the 2010s.

On paper, it was a bold undertaking, made possible by the band's above-average technical chops and crystalline melodic gift, but also by a fortunate moment in history. When Foals were taking their first steps in the late 2000s, the indie band boom that had swept the UK throughout that decade was gradually fading, leaving the Oxford lads fertile ground and little competition. A vacuum to be filled with their razor-sharp guitars blasted at volumes too loud to ignore.

Rooted in that fertile breeding ground that has spawned dozens of monumental bands (Ride and Radiohead, to name a couple of obvious examples) — namely the Oxford university campuses — every member of Foals had prior experience in bands on the local scene. Singer and guitarist Yannis Philippakis (originally from Karpathos in the Aegean) and drummer Jack Bevan had played together in a cult math-rock outfit, Edmund Fitzgerald, which they disbanded after growing tired of the project's overly serious atmosphere; while bassist Walter Gervers and keyboardist Jimmy Smith, both students at Abingdon School (the same school attended by Radiohead), had played together in the indie-rock band Face Meets Grill.

Youthmovies singer Andrew Mears, who had actually helped found the group, was initially also part of it, but left even before the debut EPs. It was precisely Mears's early departure that led Philippakis to become the band's lead singer. Not exactly what you'd call a gifted vocalist, with his slightly shrill tone, always strained almost to the point of breaking, Yannis was nonetheless exactly what Foals' music needed to become truly inimitable.

Precisely because Yannis and Jack simply needed an outlet after the exhausting experience with Edmund Fitzgerald, the founding principles behind Foals' music were few indeed. Philippakis himself, in an interview, described the simple rules the band had set for themselves in rehearsal like this: only staccato rhythms (a musical articulation in which two or more notes are played separately, a legacy of Yannis and Jack's math background) and very, very loud guitars. Equally playful and simple is the origin of the band's name, which a mutual friend pinned on Yannis and co. after calling them "a bunch of foals, like stinky, smelly, and, you know…"

The material gathered on their early singles and EPs, particularly 2007's "Hummer" (a track marked by a lethal blend of math-rock and dance-punk that lights up an episode of the iconic series "Skins"), was good from the very start, often excellent. It didn't take long, then, for a mid-to-large label, Transgressive, to take notice and sign them in 2007. That same year, the band began working on their debut LP under the wing of Dave Sitek of Tv On The Radio.

From that point on, Foals' career would be fortunate and unstoppable, to the point that Jimmy Smith alone would still find the time to finish his studies.

2008 – 2012: Antidotes and Total Life Forever

Released in Europe by Transgressive and in the US by Sub Pop, 2008's Antidotes was recorded at Stay Gold Studios in Brooklyn. Producer Dave Sitek let the band record all the material themselves, only getting his hands on it afterwards, at the mixing stage. According to the band, who weren't exactly thrilled with the work of the celebrated producer and Tv On The Radio member, his touch nonetheless proved rather intrusive. The harshest towards the producer was Yannis himself, who, losing patience, told the press that Sitek had messed everything up in terms of sound depth and echo, making the record sound as if it came from the Grand Canyon.

In truth, on many tracks, especially the more expansive ones ("Red Socks Pugie", "Like Swimming"), the much-maligned depth crafted by Dave Sitek works very well, and never undermines the quartet's rhythmic punch. The episode, however, led Foals to demand greater control and a firmer hand over their own material, something they would insist on with much more resolve from the next album onward.

The energy Foals have been able to unleash since their earliest days exploded in the faces of unsuspecting listeners of the time right from the first two tracks. Basically, no sooner had you put the record on and hit play. "The French Open" and "Cassius", both driven by convulsive, angular rhythms, coldly fuse the mathematical structures of Battles with the brazen dance-punk swagger of The Rapture. Impossible not to dance to, but it's a jerky, stop-start dance, driven by crystalline, razor-sharp guitars. "Electric Bloom" packs just as much firepower, though it's tinged with post-punk echoes and the imprint of Bloc Party.

"Heavy Water" puts the jagged momentum of the rhythm section and the band's tight interlocking musicianship at the service of an almost progressive evolution. Toward the end, some spot-on ska horn flourishes arrive too, and we'll find them again in all the most swaggering tracks of the bunch ("Balloons", and "The French Open" itself).

In more fluid, stretched-out episodes like "Big Big Love (Fig. 2)", "Olympic Airwais" and the submerged "Like Swimming", we can hear a budding taste for hazy, expansive atmospheres that would later lead the band to brush up against post-rock.

Despite its rhythmic liveliness and the palpable euphoria typical of a band's debut, Antidotes isn't always bright and carefree — it often explores more ambiguous feelings too. Take "Cassius", which between one hip-sway and one leg-kick forces you to recall that double-faced partner, two-sided just like Cassius Clay himself.

If Antidotes doesn't quite reach the heights of the two records that would follow it — unquestionably the peaks of the Oxford band's career — it's only down to the band's excessive ambition: brimming over and impetuous as they were, they never thought to trim a tracklist afflicted by one too many carbon-copy moments. Included on various special editions to the point of being regarded as part of the official running order, "Brazil Is Here" and "Dearth", for instance, add nothing to what the tracks originally on the record already said.

Forgivable flaws aside, Antidotes is an essential, unmissable listen for understanding the band's stylistic origins, as well as for savouring a ferocity and compositional urgency that would soon be (at least partly) sacrificed in favour of greater restraint and organisation in the arrangements, and in the way of channelling an overflowing emotional charge.

With a thunderous third place on the UK sales chart and the talent to match, the road to winning over audiences and leading a new generation of UK-made indie bands was already paved. Alongside heavyweights like These New Puritans, Klaxons, Late Of The Pier and Metronomy, Foals would go on to form a first-rate independent scene — the kind we can now only look back on or dream of — and they were among its longest-lasting and most consistently excellent representatives.

Also recorded outside the UK, this time in Gothenburg, Total Life Forever (2010) wouldn't manage to establish Foals commercially (it would in fact do worse than its predecessor on the UK chart, peaking at number eight), but it would spread the band's fame abroad and would win over critics for good, who would come to hail it almost unanimously with top marks.

Although the guitar technique on display is roughly the same as on Antidotes, it's clear from opener "Blue Blood" onward just how much the two records differ. The rhythms are as angular as on the first album, but less frantic, putting their sharp edges at the service of clearer, more relaxed melodies. Yannis's voice, too, is less jagged and unruly, scratching less and, in the choruses, caressing a softness unheard of until that point. These are the first signs of what would happen starting with Holy Fire and especially What Went Down, which, offering clearly pop songs, would finally win over the mainstream audience for good.

Finally, the tendency of some Antidotes tracks to drift into ambient or post-rock excursions takes over almost every track on Total Life Forever.

During the usual round of promotional interviews, the band described the album's theme as "the dream of a dying eagle". Expressionistic and dreamlike, this promotional hyperbole frames rather well the feelings the album is able to evoke.

Its instrumental lines are able to sketch out geographic places that become places of the soul, as happens in the wonderful "Spanish Sahara". A place where, by their own admission, none of Foals has ever been, but which means far more than a geographic coordinate: a place to "wash the dirt off your hands and rid yourself of the horror". A metaphysical space like a blue grotto gleaming with crystals and divine auras, toward which the guitars open a portal halfway through the song. One of the most astonishing musical landscapes of the 2010s.

Less dazzling, "Black Gold" also drifts, toward its end, into what we might call a fluid emotional landscape-painting. The same goes for the shape-shifting "After Glow", which, after a clearly post-rock opening, unleashes a rapid-fire rhythm of pure math-rock over screaming guitars. This is a band at the peak of its powers, reaching those same heights on "This Orient" too, another clear nod to math-rock that marks out the rhythm of a tangle of nonsense nursery rhymes.

The single "Miami" and the title track are the songs closest to the first stirrings of Foals' career. Their squared-off funk groove, though, rather than being suited to dancing in a club full of colourful cocktails and MDMA, feels more fitting for a stroll along a beach in full celebration. If "Total Life Forever" had also been chosen as a single, the album would probably have climbed a couple more spots on the charts.

On "2 Trees" Yannis unveils an unprecedented velvety falsetto over the guitars, which crackle under a wash of tremolo to produce a vibrant dreamgaze; while "Alabaster" draws on the martial stride of a math-rock bassline to lead us through the imposing ruins of a Mesopotamian civilisation.

Produced by Luke Smith (Depeche Mode, Everything Everything), with Alan Moulder stepping in to mix only "Spanish Sahara", Total Life Forever nevertheless sees Foals credited as artistic directors of the entire project, from the music to the superb underwater cover art by Tinhead. It's an aspect to which Foals would always devote the greatest care, delivering some of the most striking and sophisticated artwork of the past decade.

2013-2018: Holy Fire and What Went Down

Total Live Forever, however, shares the title of best Foals album with Holy Fire from 2013. It's a record that carries forward much of what the band had set out to do on the two previous chapters, while also establishing the Foals' enormous stature as pop songwriters - songs just as perfect for the indie crowd as for heavy radio rotation. For many fans, as well as part of the specialist press, Total Live Forever is the peak of the Oxford band's output. It's certainly the high point of their catalogue in terms of emotional landscapes, what in the trade we call soundscapes. It's an aspect that will often resurface among the Foals' songs, but never again quite at that level.

After a long, sumptuous prelude, aptly titled "Prelude", in which the band warms up every instrument, letting fragments of riffs and rhythms that will run through the whole album shine through, it's time for one of the best Foals songs ever, "Inhaler". Tough, taut guitars, strained vocals, cosmic trails, a bridge that, instead of leading into the chorus, drives into a storm of granite riffs: these are the ingredients with which the Oxford band builds an atypical hit, one in which nothing is where you'd expect it, like the ending, where the guitars chime with a placid funk that still runs like clockwork.

It's followed by another bomb, this time a dancefloor one. A "My Number" destined to remain the Foals' most famous single, which lightens the dance-punk charge of Antidotes' sharpest tracks to storm the charts. Yannis, who just one track earlier was spreading his ancestral cry amid swarms of meteors, here nails an utterly carefree, catchy chorus (“You don’t have my number/ We don’t need each other now/ And we don’t need the city/ The creed or the culture now”). Across these two songs, the band shows it can both play by the rules and reshuffle the deck as it pleases. Either way, the result is outstanding.

A square-cut rhythm and a synth crackling with low frequencies kick off "Bad Habit", an ethereal pop song with shoegaze guitars howling softly in the background; while "Everytime" flaunts a jerky rhythm and another sticky nursery-rhyme chorus.

And so, without a single dip in quality, we reach the other single, "Late Night", and with it the Foals' dark side. It's dead of night, Ed Congreave spreads darkness with the sparse notes of his keyboards, Yannis gropes around lost in the dark streets, whispers his loneliness, then lets it explode into a scream. The guitar solo here is a display of pain and weightlessness, making the song bleed before it fades out just as it began.

The first with almost carioca-like rhythmic flourishes, the second with epic, emotional guitars: "Out Of The Woods" and "Milk & Black Spiders" bring back the dim light of dream-pop to brighten the record before the frontal assault of "Providence", a virulent, screamed cybernetic math-blues, obviously perfect for live shows.

The final ten minutes, split between the nocturnal nursery rhyme of "Stepson" and the pulverized atmosphere of "Moon", are instead a soft moon landing to be lulled by with half-closed eyes. It's the return of the imaginative Foals of Total Live Forever, who prove just as magnificent when tackling dematerialized suites - in the case of "Moon", entirely devoid of rhythm.

Wrapped in yet another superb cover, depicting a group of horses and riders on the shoreline at dusk, Holy Fire is a perfect record. Here, the early maturity the band reached on its second album, combined with the immediacy of chart-friendly pop and indie-rock, becomes explosive, yielding 11 songs that are at once deep, detailed and immediate.

It wasn't just the Mercury Prize nomination and the number two spot on the UK charts scored by Holy Fire: what made the Foals the most talked-about band of the moment were also their insane live shows, during which the band unleashed irresistible energy, with Yannis as the absolute star, jumping, thrashing about and climbing the stage rigging. Given all that, it's easy to see why, in 2015, What Went Down was, at least at home, the most anticipated alternative rock record of the year. The album, the last with Gervers on bass, didn't repeat the success of Holy Fire, stalling at number 3. Still, it was a major commercial success.

The glossier sound, achieved under the supervision of producer James Ford (Arctic Monkeys, Last Shadow Puppets), cemented the Foals' fame with the mainstream audience. At the same time, though, it began to disappoint those who had followed the band from the very start.

The fire of math-rock and dance-punk is, in fact, almost entirely spent on What Went Down. Yannis's promise, having announced the record as the loudest the band had ever made, is kept pretty much only by the title track and the muscular "Snake Oil", while what prevails instead are slow songs with velvety, flirtatious choruses ("Birch Tree", "Give It All", "London Thunder").

"Night Swimmers" follows the blueprint of Total Live Forever's livelier, poppier tracks; while "A Knife In The Ocean" is the usual closing slow number, though more urgent and epic than the "Moon"-"Stepson" pairing.

The best tracks of the bunch, which we could easily rank among the peaks of the Foals' career, are therefore few, and add little to what the English band had already said up to that point. Among them we can certainly count "Mountain At My Gates", accompanied by an innovative 360-degree explorable video, and the aforementioned "What Went Down". It's practically an "Inhaler" on steroids, with guitars even more taut and snappy, effectively paired with the high-definition video that lingers on the muscles of a running pitbull.

2019-present: Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost Part 1 & 2

Menacing yet damningly trendy palm trees, their foliage a thick pink, cast their shadow over an old-world, upper-middle-class mansion, almost swallowing it whole. It's the post-apocalyptic scenario chosen by Foals for the cover of the first part of what is, by intent at least, their most ambitious work. A concept album split into two parts about the threats that contemporary life poses to us and our planet, full of fears, distress signals and feverish vocals.

Sonically, Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost (Part 1) moves along the path traced by the previous two albums. Those records, while never abandoning the syncopated rhythms and guitar stop-and-go typical of math-rock, had bent those traits toward song form and toward the upper reaches of the UK charts. A goal achieved brilliantly on both albums, though What Went Down had already shown a dip in quality compared to the 2013 masterpiece.

It opens with "Moonlight", a brief and heartfelt invocation, Yannis lamenting with his head twisted toward the moon. Along with the hypnotic, experimental "Café D'Athens" — where the vocal drags itself through a labyrinth of glittering percussion — it's one of the rare rhythmically relaxed moments on the record. For the rest, there's barely time to catch your breath, whether it's the blazing indie-rock of "Exits" and "White Onions", or the funky "In Degrees", an utterly danceable track that even brings to mind !!!.

On that last track, as well as on the bewitching "Syrups", where he lays down a hypnotic and original groove, the Greek-born singer makes sure no one misses departed bassist Walter Gervers too much (live, he's replaced by another four-string acrobat, Jeremy Pritchard of Everything Everything).

"Sunday" is two songs in one: first a long, dragging ballad written expressly to break the fans' hearts, then suddenly an electro landmine goes off. A hybrid track that recalls the dance mutations the Stone Roses pulled off mid-song on "I Am The Resurrection", and later the Franz Ferdinand did on "Lucid Dreams". Yet it doesn't lose an ounce of personality or recognisability, thanks to the trademark raw holler of Philippakis's voice. The album closes amid stardust with a mournful piano ballad titled "I'm Done With The World (& It's Done With Me)", with a faint Coldplay aftertaste.

It doesn't reach the heights of Holy Fire, but it's certainly a step forward from the somewhat laboured songwriting of What Went Down.

A cover less garish than that of Part 1, but more romantic and decadent, with flowers twining gently around cemetery crosses at dusk (a time of day the band has always been fond of), is tasked with containing the energy Foals promised ever since the release of the previous chapter — though Part 2 is, in truth, more restrained in terms of riffs and volume.

That the promise had been kept was already clear from the singles: "The Runner", the usual Foals-ian drive but with a pumped-up bass and piano reinforcing the guitars, and above all "Black Bull", taut to the point of snapping, adrenaline-fuelled and howled. Its power is underscored by the video too, which, just as the one for "What Went Down" captured a mastiff mid-run and used high definition to highlight the tension in every muscle, here immortalises a raging bull smashing through a wall of flowers.

"Wash Off", meanwhile, tries to be this album's "My Number", with its square-edged but damningly fluid math-funk, delivered in that way that only comes naturally to the firm of Smith (guitar), Philippakis (bass) & Bevan (drums). It doesn't reach the level of that single off the masterpiece Holy Fire, but it's still a great listen, and a great hip-swaying one too. "Like Lightning" imports the warmth of an alternative-blues riff into the band's cerebral sound, enough to briefly recall the Black Keys; a bold choice, but among the less successful on the tracklist.

"10.000 Feet" has the task of opening the final trio of songs, with a loose rhythm and a slightly sulky ascending melody. Despite being the most delicate track on the record, "Into The Surf" is probably also the most entrancing: an underwater atmosphere, a keyboard arpeggio that seems to ripple straight out of a coral reef, and Yannis's vocal wrapping around you like an embrace.

The ten minutes of "Neptune" close things out. We're still in Atlantis, or perhaps in hyperspace (what difference does it make), for a long electric ride that explodes in the middle rather than at the end, stretching out instead into guitar friction and electronic bursts before the catharsis of a warm, conciliatory chorus.

Part 2 doesn't shine in every section the way Part 1 did, but it confirms the great form of Yannis and co., who, having set aside the mainstream ambitions of What Went Down, prove once again their greatness by doing what they do best. That is, a mathematical and powerful indie-rock, nervy, at times bristling, but by now so familiar that it's recognisable from the very first chord.

In 2020 it's time for a reckoning for Foals, a band certainly no stranger to collaborations with the electronic scene. Over the years the quartet has often invited world-famous DJs and producers to rework their material into versions better suited to the club. After the uneven double release Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost (our review of part 1 and of part 2) comes a retrospective gathering all the most significant remixes of their career, collected across the three volumes of Collected Reworks, the first of which has now been released.

The biggest name included here is without doubt Hot Chip, fittingly placed at the start of the tracklist, even if their version of "My Number" isn't among the most exciting moments of the compilation, ending up, all things considered, less danceable than the Foals' own jagged but irresistible math-funk rhythm. If anything, the high point comes with the previously unreleased remix of "Into The Surf", which Hot Since 82 immerses in '80s disco atmospheres, complete with sax and superb bass drops, or with the deep house treatment Solomun applies to "Late Night" (over 55 million views on YouTube), which changes the track's sonic clothing while preserving the livid, nocturnal mood of the original, and the even more Balearic one given to "Olympic Airways" by Ewan Pearson.

The boldest remix is without question that of "Spanish Sahara" (with no fewer than three remixes, the most represented track in the collection) courtesy of John Dahlbäck, who turns a spiritual track into a dance piece bordering on the brash, exploiting Yannis's original vocals to trigger early-2000s Europop pathos. You may love it or hate it, but it's among the most interesting operations on the tracklist.

Also excellent is “The Runner,” worked over a straight-up kick drum and beefed up with souped-up synths and female backing vocals courtesy of RÜFÜS DU SOL.

After a double album released in installments that flaunted ambition and complexity from its very title and concept (“Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost”), it was clear from the release of the first singles that “Life Is Yours” would be a whole different beast: an LP with a summery vocation, all positive energy and breezy choruses. Foals are no strangers to flagrantly pop songs, in which their math-funk edge is put to work crafting winking, danceable grooves (just think of the evergreen “My Number”), but this, their seventh studio album, marks the first time that this kind of song makes up the majority of the tracklist. Given its release date too, it's easy to see it as a sort of summer album.

All placed at the start of the record, the four singles that preceded the release of the Oxford band's new effort all convey great positivity and a sense of reclaiming one's own destiny (the title track), now through all-hip-swaying edges and euphoric vocals bordering on rap (“Wake Me Up”), now through bright, lively guitar strumming (“2 A.M.”), and finally a disco-funk groove in the wake of Chic and Daft Punk.

Driven by a snapping, confident bassline, the interlude “(Summer Sky)” leads into a second half of the album where, however, not everything goes as the band would have liked, especially when tracks like “Flutter” and “The Sound” soften the attack a bit too much, somewhat losing its sharp identity. In place of a markedly Foals-sounding but truly uninspired “Under The Radar,” we do however find a “Looking High” whose reach toward a blinding horizon makes it a delight to lose yourself in.

It closes amid balearic rhythms, guitars plucked with great verve and the irresistible sun-bleached harmonies of “Wild Green,” a track that could effectively be considered the sum total of the whole operation.

Certainly not without flaws, but perfect for the summer season and packed with potential live dynamite, “Life Is Yours” confirms the versatility of Yannis Philippakis's band and sets aside not only the bad omens of the album that preceded it, but also all the trends of contemporary British indie rock. Boasting a career now spanning more than fifteen years, Foals thus show a great desire to have fun and reinvent themselves, leaving no clues as to a future that could really take any shape.

Contributions by Claudio Lancia (“Collected Reworks Vol. 1”)

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