Balloons
Foals
My advice to all bands; NEVER support Foals. It will only end in depression and self-deprecation.
Long story short, my old band Jacobi had the good fortune of supporting Foals back in 2006. This was also the very same night we split up. Poignant, as during our set we blew an amp and their set just blew our minds. Foals were without doubt the greatest live band I'd ever seen and heard. And I've seen a lot!
This was in an era when they were JUST a live band; all they had were a few vinyls to sell and a brief array of mp3s scattered around the internet. If you've seen them live, then you'll understand the sheer intensity in their performance. We're not talking about throwing shapes and hurling stuff around, I'm talking about stellar workmanship.
Talking Heads sucking on meth-amphetamine sandwiches with echoes of Q & Not U and The Rapture. They were the Charlie Sheen of the jangly-angular dance-pop scene. #Winning.
Flash-forward a year and I'm at the world's greatest house party of all time. Foals are playing in someone's living room in Withington. Easily 200 people in one room stampeding as they played squashed up in a corner, the floor shaking like a trampoline. Afterwards, I asked Jimmy (the 'handsome one') "When are you going to ruddy release something you git?". He then revealed illustrious tales involving the possibilities of nabbing Erol Alkan and/or Dave Sitek to produce their album.
Double ker-ching!
Well this is all sounding pretty awesome now isn't it? My new favourite band, one of two insanely bad-ass producers. Words could not express how much I wanted to just shove them into a room and lock them up until they recorded something. My mind was on edge just waiting for the day I heard something, just 'anything' by these phenomenal gits.
Then the day arrived. "Cassius" was the first sneak preview of what was to come. Trumpets, eh? Okay, fair enough, but let's not get carried away with overdubs and miscellaneous instrumentation in the studio guys. You're a live band, if you're going to do this album justice, then it has be recorded live.
I then heard the new 'versions' of old favourites "The French Open", "Balloons" and "Two Steps Twice". My heart sank faster than something that sinks very fast.
"Again with the horns? They don't belong here? Why do these songs sound so flat?" I said, to myself in a lonely room. Lifeless, mechanical recordings of songs that I know for FACT kick harder than a pregnant mule. I listened to the rest of Antidotes with a small lit tea candle of hope that the new material was going to outweigh my disappointment. I was quite shocked to find a bunch of mid-tempo ambient experimental tracks that didn't go anywhere.
I do recall an earlier encounter speaking to Jimmy again at The Roadhouse, where he was quite miffed with the NME's review of 'Hummer' referring to them as another 'Klaxxon' wannabe group. Could this have been the reason why they consciously altered their course?
"Balloons" was the song that got stuck in your head for the rest of the night after you saw Foals play. I used to love it, along with the rest of their stuff. Not the dead-horse Dave Sitek version however, and I will always hold a grudge against him for ruining Antidotes. I could have done a better job*.
I listened to their second album, 'Total Life Forever' and I did enjoy it, but only by having to rediscover them for who they are now and not the band they used to be, and the band I (still) want them to be.
* and/or any other classic 'Armchair Football Manager' comments.
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