FOALS

I first mentioned Oxford's FOALS, or Foals as I prefer (but definately not The Foals), in my Bands I Want To Namedrop Because They Will Become Big In 2007 feature [link]. Optimistically, I could claim I was about a year off but following the amount of hype which they generated towards late last year and then in the 'big in 2008' predictions (e.g #5 in BBC Sound of 2008, making it onto the NME 2008 New Noise list), they only stumbled into the UK singles charts at #26 with 'Cassius'. Okay, so the album 'Antidotes' has only been released this week but I somewhat doubt it'll be a chart topper.



The appearances on television (Skins, Never Mind The Buzzcocks, Later With Jools Holland and even the Culture Show), combined with a Live Lounge appearance for Jo Whiley's BBC Radio 1 show seem to have little to raise the band's profile. Unfortunately, the hype appears to have raised expectations of the band and they've failed to reach such unfairly high standards.

The band themselves have been critical of the hype and to be fair to them, the album is hardly a dud. Leaving off previous singles 'Hummer' and 'Mathletics' was possibly a mistake but there have been glowing reviews (DrownedInSound, The Times, and err Virgin Media). The general consensus seems to suggest that while the album is good, it's not great and that the early promise may not have been fulfilled. But let me finish with a reasonably silly parallel to Lesley Vainokolo and his newly found career in rugby union - the hype surrounding his emergence was overwhelming yet he hasn't been consistently good. But most importantly, we're all aware of the flashes of brilliance that Mr Volcano is capable of. Foals have given us a glimpse of what they can do, let's hope the next album puts paid to the doubters. And I'm sure their live performances still prove they're a force to be reckoned with.

FOALS - Two Steps Twice (Live At The Astoria) [Yourfilehost download]
FOALS - Hummer (Live At The Astoria) [Yourfilehost download]

Both tracks are available for free at wearefoals.com [link]. You can buy 'Antidotes' through the FOALS online store [link] or download on 7digital.com

And if you hate FOALS, you can even make them sound better by remixing 'Electric Bloom' through last.fm, where you can download the seperate parts for the track [link].

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Just a final reminder that my first ever podcast is being taken down at the end of the month, after a year long reign of terror. You can have a listen to it [here] and even download it if you really want to. Cheers!