#2: Foals - Antidotes (2008)

1. The French Open
2. Cassius
3. Red Socks Pugie
4. Olympic Airways
5. Electric Bloom
6. Balloons
7. Heavy Water
8. Two Steps Twice
9. Big Big Love (Fig. 2)
10. Like Swimming
11. Tron

After the lengthy introduction that preceded the previous review, I move to an album without much context behind it, apart from the fact that I still haven't seen the band live yet. Foals probably don't need too much introduction, having exploded in popularity at the start of the year (this album made the top 3 of the UK charts on the week of its release). It may be a recent album, but it's still a damn good one.

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Foals are a band of opposites - immediate, but with an underlying depth to them, and combining a level of math-rock intricacy that reminds me of Battles with pop sensibilities to make an easily accessible album that's also incredibly rewarding.

Those pop sensibilities come to the forefront most obviously on recent singles 'Cassius' and 'Balloons', with instantly catchy guitar lines, funky bass, memorable lyrical hooks and brass twiddles. 'Red Socks Pugie', meanwhile, feels rhythmically like Bloc Party on fast forward, contrasting with soaring instrumentation and almost yearning lyrics ("These heart-swells, oh, which make us explode.")

When they're not creating jerky math-pop classics, the band demonstrate a more relaxed side without losing any of their intensity. 'Olympic Airways' features tender vocals and a more chilled-out vibe, yet it maintains a sense of drive thanks to understated but incessant drumming. 'Electric Bloom' continues this style, and is a particular highlight: 5 minutes of blissed-out melancholy that sounds like it was built on the guitar riff from the end of Jimmy Eat World's 'Cautioners'. 

Even within a single song, the band's music evolves and changes. 'Heavy Water', as it's title suggests, is a weighty, deliberate affair, starting out with a slow and dream-like feel that transforms into an intense dance-rock number, before ending with jazzy trumpet blasts. Meanwhile, 'Two Steps Twice' pulls off the feat of becoming an entirely different song about halfway through: Staccato vocals and intricately woven guitars give in to a massive building chant that eventually becomes an anthemic indie floor-filler. 'Big Big Love (Fig. 2)' also manages effortless feats of metamorphosis, with the song switching between a riff similar to that in 'Electric Bloom' and another riff laden with Interpol/Editors style guitar effects, with the rest of the instrumentation undergoing a seamless transition along with it.

The handclap-laden, aquatic-sounding swirls of  'Like Swimming'  break down into little more than buzzes of static that serve as a perfect introduction to 'Tron', a song that has an epic air of finality to it that's fitting for an album closer. It also has a darker feel to it than most of the other songs, with frontman Yannis warning "If something won't heal, comforts can't help you out" as the music builds ominously around him, before a blast of trumpets ends the album as it began.

The lyrics are more cryptic in some places than others, but they seem to deal with escapism ("Let's go to an aviary far from home") and the chaos of modern life ("These wasp's nests in your head"). The band also pull the trick of making them feel like they're being used as another instrument, math-rock style. This is most notable during 'The French Open', where short, repeated chants add as much to the sense of rhythm as everything else in the song does.

The great thing about the songs as a whole is that each time you listen to them you can pick out something different: An understated bassline, little guitar fills that add depth to the song, a relentlessly intense drumbeat, or a lyric that really hits home. Not only will the songs grab you from the first listen, they'll also make you want to come back for more in order to gain a greater understanding of them.

Overall, I personally feel that it's difficult to find fault with Antidotes: Foals have made an instantly brilliant album that also stands up to repeated listens, and because of that this album will certainly be deserving of any accolades thrust upon it at the end of the year.