Saturday, March 22, 2008

Foals - "Antidotes"

Transgressive Records, 2008

For the last several months I was somewhere beyond the newest music. I was rather becoming absorbed in old things. Probably, I’ve passed over a few interesting albums but fortunately not all of them. I managed to listen to some contemporary music. Battles was such a thing, supposedly new and revolutionary. Now, several months after their debut, I found "Antidotes" by Foals – an album which possibly is a British response for guys from New York.

The album starts great. At the beginning we have "The French Open" which, due to its rhythm, introduces the listener to the climate and creates some expectations connected with the rest of the material. After this, the following piece, "Cassius", continues the theme from the first song with a similar rhythm and adds something else at the same time. After very good beginning, the music becomes quite boring. In advance, I’m very sorry for all the comparisons to Battles, but I think that in this case it will be unavoidable. If the record of the American band was interesting or even surprising for the whole time of its duration, Foals’ music is still invariable and starts to repeat itself. When after the first listening to some album I don’t remember very well any good moment, the next approaches bring some effects in the form of favourite songs from given record. I didn’t have something like that with "Antidotes". Every time I was listening to it, I liked and remembered only the beginning of the album described above. Well, maybe it’s worth to say about the single "Balloons" and following it "Heavy Water" as well. But the whole rest passes me by. It was completely different with Battles – this music was interesting and absorbing every time, even though it was well-known from the very beginning.

Although Foals’ debut isn’t very interesting, it sounds good. The tone isn’t original as well but it’s good and fresh – I can’t have any reservations about it. The large part of the newest, the most recent bands plays like that. The examples: aforementioned Battles or Klaxons. Dance-punk music seems going out of fashion in math-rock music favour. Supposedly, this particular genre is represented by Foals. The band claim that they don’t care about popularity because they are interested in creativity. That’s a good attitude. But they should work on their pieces and make them sound more dissimilar.

3/5

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