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Album Review: Foals – Holy Fire

Alex Killeen delves into the new Foals’ album but finds the album’s production too intrusive to its sound

Friday 15 November 2013

Having only dabbled in Foals’ previous works on casual level, I’ve never truly engaged with much of their work before. Going from friends’ accounts they are probably worth a listen and should have grabbed my attention prior to this release. Holy Fire is not exactly what I was expecting. I’d always seen Foals as ‘just another indie band’ but this album sort of relieved me of those preconceptions.

It opens with an extremely surreal feel with ‘Prelude’, with a steady but heavily distorted almost haunting guitar that echoes, almost audibly glowing. If anything it’s almost overly reliant on effects, taking away from some of that defined skill and precision that can make an album great. Things improve with ‘Inhaler’ with a more unified and tactile sound emerging from the different instruments. However, the lyrics are still oddly manipulated with effects and at two songs in, I found myself wishing that I could just hear a genuine show of Yannis Philippakis’s vocal abilities.

The album hits a high point with ‘My Number’ as this third track in, finally some coherent vocal work, excellent representations of technical prowess and, generally, an excellent tune that I could see myself listening to again and again. ‘Everytime’ carries on this revelation and then immediately after the flow of the album is slowed by ‘Late Night’. In no way is it a bad song but it just feels like it disrupts and confuses the order of the album.

The second half or so of this album is just weird; it just doesn’t really work. Tracks like ‘Out Of The Woods’ and ‘Milk & Black Spiders’ are too similar in their composition, rhythm and use of effects to previous tracks that I feel like I’ve already heard them. ‘Providence’ is messy: it starts off calm and descends into anarchy, nothing I would usually have a problem with but it feels out of the blue here. It does end on a semi high note though. Although slow-paced, ‘Stepson’ and ‘Moon’ are airy in their atmosphere but they have an emotional physicality. It feels like the words have meaning – perfect listening for revision or relaxation.

Yes, this album was nominated for a Mercury Prize, and with clear highlights like ‘My Number’ and ‘Inhaler’, I can see why. But I can see why it didn’t win. It just falls short of that something that unifies, it’s http://nouse.co.uk/2013/11/15/album-review-foals-holy-fire Archived 11 Dec 2018 06:56:27 Nouse Web Archives Album Review: Foals – Holy Fire Page 2 of 3 a bit of a mish-mash that finds itself relying on effects a bit too much for it to show the skill that lie underneath.

Rating: ★★★☆☆

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One comment

Music fan 15 Nov ’13 at 2:59 pm

seems a little irrelevant nine months after it was released… I think you should’ve listened to their earlier stuff to put this in context for yourself.

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