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Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
Foals, suggests Total Life Forever, are thinkers. Whereas most bands seem comfortable dropping a second album that sounds a lot like the first one but recorded a bit quicker, this Oxfordshire quintet have done their utmost to reinvent themselves as every turn. Largely gone is the furious dance-punk that powered their earlier singles, already beginning to fade as they dropped their 2008 debut Antidotes. Replacing it on Total Life Forever is a broader musical canvas that is becoming becomes increasingly hard to pigeonhole. Recorded with producer Luke Smith, formerly of Clor, songs like "After Glow" and "This Orient" are voluminous, heavily textured exercises in atmospherics and percussion that draw on shoegaze, the Fourth World funk of later Talking Heads and experimental electronica.
This is not to say, however, that Foals have entirely bred out their pop gene. "Miami" fuses boom-bap beats with a stiff funkiness and fluid guitar lines that recall Battles, while the title track is a cool ska strut that finds Yannis Philippakis crooning "I know a place where I can go when I’m low". It’s not all immediate, but Total Life Forever is plainly crafted with care and attention, the sort of record that sinks gradually into your consciousness and stays put. –-Louis Pattison
Review
Second albums, as John Lennon once famously remarked, are what happen when you're busy making other plans. Just ask Oxford five-piece Foals, whose career to date has been distinguished by colossal doses of hype and the sort of niggling pomposity which led frontman Yannis Philippakis to declare his ambition to write a "ballet with beats". Foals, he seemed to be suggesting, were in the Future Business.
The band's 2008 debut, Antidotes, delivered on the early promise of their cool-yet-frenetic style. But the widescreen production from TV on the Radio's Dave Sitek hinted at the limitations of their approach–something, you felt, would have to give for Foals to step things up a notch. Their answer on Total Life Forever is to relax the binary plotting of their punk-funk jams and punch up the pop factor. If this all sounds distressingly unlike the future, that's because it is. But we needn't fret: the trick here is to locate a beating heart, the missing Z to their rigorous X and Y axes, without losing sight of what made them so exciting in the first place.
First single This Orient is compelling evidence they've pulled off the balancing act with panache, shades of Steve Reich infusing the swoonsome pop splendour Bloc Party could never quite muster. Meanwhile Spanish Sahara is a mortally-fixated centrepiece, inspired by the young Philippakis' traumatic encounter with a dead dog floating in the sea. Building in vaguely post-rock fashion from stark beginnings that recall The xx's tousled melancholy, it reaches a superb finale, easily the most affecting thing they've done.
Indeed, this album's opening salvos make such light work of this lightening up business you'll wonder if it's The Mystery Jets' new record you've walked in on, not Foals'. The chimed intro of Blue Blood features Yannis properly singing and could almost be Glasvegas, at least until it suckers you with an ace chorus that steps directly to the dancefloor. Miami is 80s stadium funk with barrelling bass and a strangely hip hop undertow. And the title-track feels similarly funky, but in a precision pop context. Elsewhere, 2 Trees finds subtler ways to grow: it's a breathy beauty recalling the delicately-knitted textures of Can at their most blissed-out.
Total Life Forever's break with the past is astutely judged, the execution is even better. For all their occasionally high-falutin' talk of Arthur Russell and Fela Kuti and the Wu-Tang Clan as influences, Foals' victory here is to loosen up and enjoy the moment. After all, the future can be a self-defeating business. --Alex Denney
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Progression is a good thing...,
By Tee Double You Bee Esq (Dorset, UK) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Total Life Forever (Audio CD)
With 'Total Life Forever' Foals have lit a slow-burning fuse. The rich crackle of gunpowder, the whiff of cordite. Don't expect the cheap and, let's be honest, slightly one-note thrills of 'Antidotes'. This is a different beast altogether. TLF is a definite song-cycle and works beautifully as such. The first four tracks are a brilliant, funky suite with the incessant yelps of old maturing into a strange mix of The Cure's Robert Smith and My Morning Jacket's Jim James. From here on in it gets even more interesting with elegant, elegiac tracks like 'Spanish Sahara' and the fantastic closing salvo of `2 Trees' and `What Remains'.After a few listens the hooks really get under your skin and take root in your brain. The longevity of the album will be borne out in this new intuitive approach - it doesn't give up its goods easily and leaves behind the repetitive sound bites of `Antidotes' for a more searching set of lyrics and emotions. The second disc offers some interesting snapshots of the album's genesis. Hardly essential but welcome variations all the same adding further flesh to TLF's bones. It's exciting to imagine where Foals might go from here, this being the reason for four stars rather than five - the sky's the limit and you can feel all the band's arms reaching upwards.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Progression not Regurgitation.,
This review is from: Total Life Forever (Audio CD)
A fantastic Album and nowhere near as much a departure as some people have been saying.Its not hummer, cassius or balloons but electric bloom and Olympic airways definitely pointed in this direction. Blue blood is a fantastic opener, spanish sahara a beautiful song and the absolute right choice as a first single/video whatever it was. After glow, black gold and what remains are songs that brings a kind of emotional depth that is usually, if not lacking then certainly only cryptically hinted at in foals songs. In fact a lot of the songs bring the technical ability, stylings and song writing of antidotes but imbue them with an emotional gravitas that they were only beginning to hint at on their début. For me personally this album solidifies what made me like antidotes in the first place and dismisses that niggling doubt I had that they were in fact just another NME hyped band not really worth their salt. I always think its a great sign if your least favourite song on an album is the lead single. Cassius became my least played on antidotes and this orient is following the same way. Not that either is a bad song I just prefer the full album experience and usually the lead single is a stand alone entity for commercial or whatever reasons and that isolation makes it divorced from the album, and this is a proper, well put together album not just a collection of glitchy pop rock songs, which is why this orient sounds more impressive on the radio than on my ipod. So, a progression? definitely, a complete change of direction? I don't think so. Glad I bought it? Hell yes. Would I recommend it? Of course. Enjoy.
20 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Everyone deserves a second chance!,
By Billy R (Newcastle - England) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Total Life Forever (Audio CD)
I walked out of a Foals gig at Newcastle about 15 months ago as I found them self indulgent on stage and totally the opposite of their 'Antidotes' album - the new release gave me the chance to see if they deserved a 'second chance'.It also coincided with the chance to see them live @ Ncle Uni and on both counts I have to own up to being glad at offering them their 'redemption' - although Sahara & Orient are stand out tracks on both the CD and live it is all round a far better effort than their first album and certainly (for me) different enough to warrant some praise. It is a more rounded album with a slightly different sound that makes it better listening as a full album than their first release - that, allied to a much better live performance shows a more mature approach. Personally, I feel that if you liked the first one you will like this one but if you have heard neither try to catch a couple of downloads and take it from there - you may be pleasantly surprised!
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