Foals
What Went Down
(Warner)
Antidotes, the 2008 debut from Foals, was all about rhythm and incantation. Follow-up Total Life Forever promised something else, something bigger and more euphoric, particularly on breakthrough track Spanish Sahara. By 2013 and third album Holy Fire, the Oxford five-piece were giving even more to their listeners track by track: rock on Inhaler, pop on My Number, soul on Late Night.
But as they’ve become less insular and started to populate the headliner end of festival bills, they’ve lost a certain identity too. Hiring an arena-friendly producer like James Ford (Mumford & Sons, Florence And The Machine, Arctic Monkeys) is like an open admission of guilt.
Ford’s trademark over-egging of the musical pudding here all but smothers Foals’ former math-rock rigour. The title track feeds off a Stooges energy but Snake Oil and A Knife In The Ocean merely cover their lack of substance with his production bombast.
Give It All is a decent enough alt-rock arena ballad, but it’s too happy to ape Florence’s tribal drumming, a rhythmic device that’s now more recognisable as a familiar James Ford trick rather than anything inherent within Foals’ own stylistic DNA. And London Thunder might as well be U2 with Thom Yorke guesting on slightly jagged keyboards.
The bottom line is that most of What Went Down is ordinary, not exceptional. Foals are now following their successors and no longer leading the way.
Alan Morrison
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