Foals Gold

Since the release of ‘Total Life Forever’, Foals have stolen the show at Glasto and Reading and narrowly missed out on the Mercury Prize. As they prepare to embark on their biggest tour yet, Lisa Wright speaks to the makers of The Fly’s album of 2010 about their thrilling, triumphant year…

The last time The Fly caught up with Foals things were very different. On the cusp of releasing their second album, the Oxford quintet were still undoubtedly a publicly polarising band, one revered and reviled for their veiled lyricisms and taut math-rock sensibilities in equal measures. Of course, by then, there’d been a low-key release of ‘Spanish Sahara’ (a track bursting at the seams with just the kind of slow-burning, spine-tingling heart that so many said they previously lacked) that hinted at something rather special, but few could have predicted ‘Total Life Forever’ and just how far it would propel the band. Six months later, it’s sitting pretty as our Album of 2010, beating genuine stadium fillers, classic artists and new loves alike (and by quite a margin), with a Mercury Prize nomination to its name and almost total – no pun intended – critical and commercial success. In support of it, Foals have sold out venue after venue, graced the covers of every music magazine worth their salt and found themselves in the far corners of the globe. The future, indeed, is not what it used to be.

Talking to frontman Yannis Philippakis – a man whose psyche has surely been delved into more than the most resolute therapy patient in recent months – in the midst of a North American tour, it becomes clear the path that led to their expansive second effort, however, seems a clear one. “When we started the band we had a specific idea about how to write and what sort of band we wanted to be; we wanted there to be parameters around the sound and for there to be a very defined aesthetic for the band. After that was put in place, the only thing left to do was de-construct it,” he begins. “I want to make music for everybody. I want to make music for the fifteen-year-old with braces who’s cutting his neighbour’s grass for £5 an hour to some businessman who’s lonely long-distance travelling. There was a perception of us being quite calculating which I think, at first, it was in many ways because it was a conscious idea to get away from what had come before in Oxford and a reaction against that. But once that had been achieved, and we felt we achieved that with ‘Antidotes’, then everything now is about doing what we want and getting away with it.”

Eloquent and impassioned, Yannis makes for as intriguing a subject as the reams of inimitably-phrased quotes littered throughout the band’s interviews suggest. In conversation, his manner is considered yet instinctive, at once intrinsically, naturally intellectual and fuelled by an obvious internal, creative fire. The fact that ‘Total Life Forever’, lyrically and musically, offers up a genuine emotional connection, then, need hardly be surprising; centred around a kind of harrowed existentialism, it’s recurrent preoccupations (fallen heroes, the inevitable, unstoppable march of technology) seem to befit the singer far more than the cryptic references of old. If Arcade Fire’s ‘The Suburbs’ was this year’s opus to the current state of the Western world, then ‘TLF’ pitches itself in a time much further away, to a world on the teetering edge of collapse. “I felt like there was almost a responsibility to communicate and to use it as a vessel to express some meaning. I think it makes it more meaningful for myself and for listeners because if you’re going to occupy 45 minutes of somebody’s time it’s all very well playing word games and having some sort of Easter egg hunt with no prize at the end, but it’s much more fulfilling for me now to see a human connection to people,” the singer enthuses in typically analogous form. Yannis’ musings on the record’s more personal relevance also surely put an end to any claims of calculated coldness that could possibly still be lingering. “I was thinking about records I used to listen to when I was growing up, particularly the solace that some lyrics would bring, and the fact that lyrics can unpick stuff and hold you in a way that music on it’s own can’t. I almost wanted to provide that for a younger version of myself, that idea of offering comfort and instruction. I think some of the lyrics are advice to myself and, even now, sometimes I wanted to write a way out of a situation, a paranoid situation, and for it to be almost a design for better living. But since then I’ve stopped reading self-help books so I think I’m gonna shut those doors.” His speech may be deeply self-aware but it’s not certainly not without its humour.

The past year’s also seen Foals up their game several notches in the live arena. Renowned for frenetic, visceral live shows right from their formative days playing house parties, one of the key tools in the band’s arsenal has undoubtedly always been the ability to pack a deadly onstage punch. This summer’s Reading Festival, however, bore witness to something we’ve never seen. A packed to bursting tent of heaving, sweaty kids (and Reading crowds are, it goes without saying, not the politest bunch) all, en masse, sitting down. Yannis instructed and everyone followed. That the atmosphere at this point (for ‘Spanish Sahara’) was just as thrilling as the amorphous, flailing mass that greeted a final glorious run through of ‘Two Steps, Twice’ is incredible. ‘Total Life Forever’, it seems, has freed the band up to inject the relentless energy of old with a new kind of pace, to “put a second gear on the bike”, to, well, mix it up. Heck, on the day we speak to them the band are even throwing early single ‘Hummer’ back into the set. “It’s definitely more fulfilling for us to play [now]; there’s different parts and different moods within the set and I enjoy the fact that it can go from one area to another whereas before it would fail or succeed on a reliance on energy.” Does it feel like that rush is still present? “I don’t think that energy’s been diminished but we feel like we don’t need to be superadrenalinised. We’re playing for an hour and a half now and as we get older our bodies are breaking down so it’s nice not to have to rely on a youthful, Red Bull-fuelled uppers energy thing. And ‘Afterglow’, for me being able to play a song like that live. I feel more when we’re playing now than I did in the beginning because then the songs didn’t have as much of a direct emotional connection.”

With festivals being slayed left, right and centre and the size of their crowds growing by the day the question, however, is surely how far they intend to reach. Logically, with venues the size of Brixton Academy selling out at a none too shabby pace, the next step up can only be arenas – but then Foals don’t exactly seem the arena type. We doubt, you see, that U2 ever did a gig in a squat christened Squallyoaks or that Take That had a channelled fixation with Mike Tyson; there’s a certain attitude, a glossy commercialism or a hollowness, that seems to align itself with venues of that size that could never really fit. Luckily, the fears seem relatively unfounded. “I don’t think we’re ever gonna be power ballad peacockrock. We have no desire to ever play arenas, but Arcade Fire are an example of a band that have written songs and play arenas but does that make them an arena band? I don’t think it does, it just makes them a band with heart that plays to more people than perhaps they would have expected. We’re happy with where we are, I’d be pretty surprised if it got to that size. I think there’d be concessions that have to be made that we’re not willing to make in order to do that – it’s difficult to predict but it’s definitely to nice to feel like it’s moved up.”

As well as catapulting themselves into the nation’s hearts, Foals have also played a fair part in bringing a new wave of Oxford cohorts into the public consciousness. Under a banner now being labelled ‘Blessing Force’ (after the phrase the band had daubed on the walls of their all-in-one house/recording studio/ general musical commune back in the city), the likes of Trophy Wife, Pet Moon (Andrew Mears, formerly of Youthmovies) and Chad Valley – two of whom are supporting on the UK leg of the tour – are heralding a new wave of dance-infused, cerebral pop. “I’m generally quite cynical about things like that because often they’re usually just tag lines and it’s almost an advertising slogan to stick things together in a way that doesn’t exist, but with that the way we’ve seen it emanate over the last year and the way that it’s come about has been such a natural progression.” elaborates Yannis. “The fact that there is something that’s geographically-based that’s come about through years of friendship and mutual ideas is really exciting to me”. It’s this sense of genuine camaraderie and mutual artistic involvement that ensures that ‘Blessing Force’, or whatever name you want to give it, is causing waves beyond the transient appreciation of the blogosphere, and if these same combined close influences are those that no doubt seeped into the surroundings whilst recording ‘Total Life Forever’ and perhaps even that played a part in the band’s first endeavours then no wonder there’s something brewing. But what of Foals themselves? Having offered up potentially the surprise release of the year, are there plans for an equally unsuspecting third? More than with most other bands the feeling remains that, success or nay, they could potentially go any way. “We’ve got instrumental stuff we’re working on but in terms of lyrics it feels too close to the end of the last record. I feel like I need to go out there and live something that isn’t playing shows… All I know is I wanna keep real life at bay in some way. I felt like it’s important to keep the threats of adult life away and the things that will destroy creativity at bay and the way of doing that last time was to live in this house together but at the same time there’s no point in writing music from this ivory tower to a place that doesn’t exist. We’ve got a bounce in our step. We really wanna make music that really connects and becomes part of a landscape that’s bigger than itself.”

Having entirely blown apart their previous horizons and proven themselves to be a band that can shoot for the heart just as much as the head, it’s fair to say that 2010 is the year that Foals not only impressed themselves firmly upon the musical landscape but started to craft it to their own image. ‘Total Life Forever’ is a stunning example of how to create something as technically brilliant as it is emotionally gripping without losing a shred of identity, and that’s why it’s our album of the year. Congratulation guys, you won the race hands down.

‘Blue Blood’ is released on November 8th on Warners.