Foals – Holy Fire (2013)

Foals – Holy Fire (2013) on Sub Pop
Sonny Crooks

What is a band supposed to do about their identity? Are they to treat their identity like any other human being or is there a strategy to evolving? Each album a band releases is a trip to a family reunion; it’s their time to show us who they are now. Foals has arrived at the gathering this year with something to prove. They’re stomping around outside by the food spread wearing a mohawk and an unbuttoned business suit jacket that has Holy Fire spray painted on the back.

Holy Fire is the third album from this Oxford quintet and it features the standard junior promise of growth. As opposed to letting that happen organically Foals have employed the production-fu of Flood and Alan Moulder to bolster the immediacy of their sound. They certainly succeeded in that area: this album constantly just wants to be heard. I’d argue that Foals never needed that sound in the past; their jerk-dance songwriting and Yannis Philippakis’ singular voice did enough to set the band apart. This is a band that was born out of the ashes of a math-rock band and just two albums ago we were still hearing whispers of that influence mixed with a dance-punk rhythm section. You’d never think of that history while listening to Holy Fire.

Maybe they want to prove that they’re maturing. Maybe they’re running out of steam and the only saving grace was to spread a heaping of slick production over tracks that never have the soul to support their ambition; at least the sounds will get out of the speaker and into people’s ears faster. It certainly makes it easier to listen to. People are definitely noticing Foals at the family reunion now–he just took his suit jacket off and he’s wearing a U2 shirt and telling everybody he actually hates them–but they’re much less subtle and certainly less interesting than at the last get-together. Is this the right kind of attention? This is part of Foals finding their identity and manipulating it though, and I would never deprive them of that experience. I grab a mozzarella cheese cube off the food spread and smile to myself watching Foals trying to do a handstand to impress a girl.

Spotify

For Fans of: Everything Everything, Bombay Bicycle Club, Bloc Party

Key Tracks: Out of The Woods, Providence, Inhaler

Rating: 4/10