Foals // UEA LCR - 08.03.13
Foals are polished, sharp, and dangerous; fast becoming one of the UK’s finest exponents.
Integrity is a hard thing to hold on to. There are few bands from the mid-noughties explosion that have held onto theirs, let alone capitalised upon it. Remarkably enough two of those bands have been announced as headliners for this year’s Latitude festival, but that’s getting ahead of ourselves. My thought is, for a band like Foals, who have ridden the crest of the ‘cool’ wave for almost a decade, there must have been a caesura after which they had to choose to embrace their popularity, or outright reject it for the sake of ultimate creative control. For Foals, I can only assume this point in time came shortly after Total Life Forever was championed as, not only a consummate follow-up album, but as what I feel to be a superb entry into the British hall of fame. Whilst Antidotes was the cure for pretentious teen malaise in 2008, Total Life Forever was a far more popular success, and provided the fillip for Foals to enter into the wider public psyche. Holy Fire could have gone one of two ways. It could have been an even darker delve into the depths of Yannis’ mind; stretched out and examined in a lightless bunker in Oxford, or it could have been a compromise.
The clientele of Foals’ headline show at UEA went some way to suggest they chose the latter. Holy Fire is bright, Technicolor, and commercial, and the crowd was a lot cheerier, clamouring for A-sides instead of stage invasions and extended breakdowns. A squeaky voice had shouted “FIXIE!” at my bike as I rode past the venue doors, nobody was drinking outside because none of them were old enough, and most of the pre-teen crowd would have thought of a big jeep, not a previous fan favourite had I mentioned ‘Hummer’ at any point. And that’s why I entered the gig a little reserved. However, any of that hesitance was soon washed away by the realisation that I didn’t have to speak to anyone, and could just enjoy they show.
And what a show it was. My thoughts that Foals may have pandered to the populists were partly justified as ‘My Number’ kick started the night in earnest, but after that came a satisfyingly varied barrage on the senses. Everything felt beefier than before – Jack found more bass in his mix, Jimmi found heavier riffs and a distortion pedal, Yannis had found the biscuit tin… In seriousness though, the new heavier direction was an absolute riot; with Yannis’ ever prevalent stage diving, fists pumping, and heads even a-banging to earlier tracks like Olympic Airways and Red Sox Pugie. With the set’s odd absence of ‘Cassius’, it was encore pairing of ‘Inhaler’ and ‘Two Steps Twice’ that finally tore the LCR apart though; the new cut with its guttural screams, and the old classic with its perpetual build up/emphatic final drop. Foals are polished, sharp, and dangerous; fast becoming one of the UK’s finest exponents. If you took those qualities, forged them into a knife and cut the band open, they’d surely bleed the Bluest Blood.
Alex Throssell
