Foals - Antidotes
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A bunch of skinny white guys from Oxford are not generally the kind of people you’d expect to ape the percussion-driven and horn-heavy funk sounds of 1970s Nigeria – but much has been made of Foals’ relationship to the energetic rhythms of the legendary Fela Kuti and co. They’ve even enlisted the help of New York Afrobeat band Antibalas on this, their debut album – so it’s obviously not a comparison they’re particularly shy of.
Flying in the face of a well-documented rant against the hype they’ve been generating, Foals are so bleeding-edge right now that they even wound up on a Myspace-only episode of Channel 4’s hit series Skins. And hype really doesn’t get much more “cred” than that.
Guests Antibalas are well to the fore as the record kicks off with ‘The French Open’ – apparently a Gallic Lacoste advertisement set to music – which is arguably the album’s strongest moment. It comes on something like Gang of Four interpreting Kuti’s Africa 70 back catalogue, and its angular, horn-and guitar-driven jazz-punk is intoxicating and very effective.
At times the sophisticated instrumentation on tracks like ‘Tron’ and ‘Heavy Water’ is genuinely breathtaking, but it’s too often let down by ordinary, almost stereotypically indie-sounding vocals. Current single ‘Cassius’ is a perfect case in point, with its choppy guitars and staccato rhythm slightly ruined by the estuary English, post-punk-by-numbers “Cassius is oh-ver” refrain.
It’s been claimed in some quarters that Foals are the sole saviours of British music – our very own answer to the New York art-rock of Battles or the disco-punk of !!! and The Rapture – but that’s well wide of the mark. They’re just worth a listen.
Stewart Turner
