Antidotes
Foals' debut, like many British records, trails clouds of homeland hyperbole. The press is calling them "math rock" and the band members have cited Gwen Stefani and Steve Reich, but Foals are squarely in a more recent and less exotic tradition: the hi-gloss end of the post-punk revival.
Foals (hailing, their MySpace page says, from "oXXXford") is a group of formalists, only the form is relatively new: The British band takes cues from recent dance-rock and post-punk revivalism as much as the early-'80s stuff that inspired the revival in the first place. On Foals' debut, Antidotes, it's easier to hear…
How To Deal With Hype, lesson #1: on Never Mind The Buzzcocks earlier this year, Foals frontman Yannis Philippakis received the traditional ribbing from Simon Amstell about their status as buzz band of the moment.
Although Oxford, England's Foals didn't release their debut full-length, Antidotes, until the spring of 2008, they had already begun to make quite a name for themselves, thanks to the British singles "Hummer" and "Mathletics," and successful dates in the U.S. the preceding fall; meaning, of course, that the anticipation for the record had plenty of time to grow.
Foals, a precocious art-punk quintet from Oxford, England, is more of a curiosity on paper than in practice.