Foals

Foals: Check em out

Antidotes (Transgressive)

Antidotes is the debut album from Oxford five piece Foals, who have impressed and infuriated the music press in equal measure since their singles 'Hummer' and 'Mathletics' hit last year.

With their Level 42 style hi-slung guitar wielding, skinny limbage and protractor haircuts, Foals don’t conform to indie rock clichés.

The band lead by Yannis Philippakis has a sound borne of mixed influences. Math-rock, Afro-beat, Punk-funk have all been terms used by the music press to describe the Foals’ sound.

They wouldn’t be far off – you can add The Cure, Talking Heads and The Rapture into the melting pot too if you’re being lazy.

David Sitek's of TV on the Radio fame is charged with the knob-twiddling here – it’s not as if he needs to hold it all together, Foals are tight bunch and excel in multi-layered textures of rhythms and beats.

It’s one tightly knotted track after the next here – not a bad thing, we appreciate the hard word from bands who impose tight restrictions on their sounds - but after about two thirds of the way through the album, you get the idea.

There are moments of magic on Antidotes, the jerky ‘Cassius’ and yelpy ‘Balloons’ were worthy choices for singles, ‘Two Steps, Twice’ is arguably the stand-out track.

Things speed up and slow down, courtesy of a gifted rhythm section, Philippakis’ occasionally slides dangerously close to yelping into someone else’s (Bloc) party.

Foals are not far off being fully appropriated by the Shoreditch style-press brigade which seems a shame – it doesn’t help when your drummer models for Burberry and a PA in Sports Direct seems as likely as an inclusion of a guitar solo on this album.

The album pretty much does what it says on the tin, it’s an antidote – mainly to the turgid nonsense of the likes of The Enemy and The Twang and indeed, as Philippakis proclaims – much of the UK music industry.

We say: 'Armpit 2.0 protractor rock gods'

They say: 'At least they're heading somewhere new, hovering to the high branches while others pick the low-hanging fruit.' The Independent.

Best Track: 'Two Steps, Twice,' beat-intense, jerk-along.

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