Foals – Antidotes
vs.
The National – Boxer
Wrath has been on me like a terrier for more than a week now about the new Foals album, Antidotes. He has used my recent obsession with The National to goad me into listening to and discussing what he has in heavy rotation, as if my opinion would give him additional credibility with himself on just how good his music taste is. Or he’s trying to pick a fight. After listening, I suspect the latter.
I think it’s a ridiculous comparison—these are two very different bands with different sounds and arguably different musical goals, but I’ll persist in the charade because I love a good argument about nothing.
Foals are working in an area of music that owes a debt to early 80s nightclub punk acts like A Certain Ratio, Gang of Four, and Public Image Ltd. It’s also a sound that has been mined with notable effect by such acts as Bloc Party, Franz Ferdinand, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, and even Les Savy Fav. I’m not as immediately taken with this album as I was with either Bloc Party’s Silent Alarm or Franz Ferdinand’s first. Though the layers of sound are well-executed and smart, they’re a bit too upbeat and lacking a sharp enough edge for my personal taste. Most significant for me, the vocal style falls flat on my ears. I’m not drawn into it—there are as yet no words or lines that jump out at me. It’s a good sound, but there doesn’t seem to be much there there. Unlike the other groups in this indie subgenre, I’m not getting the sense of a song that surpasses the initial musical idea. Foals are worth continued attention, but they’ve got a lot of competion and they haven’t closed the sale with me.
Those critical points aside, the third through fifth tracks, “Red Socks Pugie,” “Olympic Airways,” and “Electric Bloom,” capture the mood better than the rest of the album for me and have made it into regular rotation. It’s those songs that lead me to say that, after a close listen, Antidotes may indeed be one of those albums that grows on me, and in a few weeks or months I’ll be raving about it. It has some potential. And if it does, I’ll post my revised opinion.
On the other hand, The National’s Boxer grabbed me the first time I heard “Fake Empire.” Shortly after that, I heard “Mistaken for Strangers,” a song I needed to play everyday for about six months and have yet to really tire of, though I’ve moved on to “Brainy” and more recently, “Squalor Victoria.” Oddly enough, that’s the song order on the album. While I still think the later songs are somewhat weaker overall—either because they are too quiet for my personal taste or lack the lyric impact of the earlier tracks—they continue to grow on me. That’s the real difference for me between these bands. I’d be more likely to be taken with Foals if I thought they were saying something, either lyrically or musically, that was significantly original. I can forgive The National for playing it safe sonically, or Matt Berninger’s occasional dangerous veering toward Crash Test Dummies territory, when he is singing things like the first verse and chorus of “Mistaken for Strangers:”
You have to do it running but you do everything that they ask you to
cause you don’t mind seeing yourself in a picture
as long as you look faraway, as long as you look removed
showered and blue-blazered, fill yourself with quarters
showered and blue-blazered, fill yourself with quarters
You get mistaken for strangers by your own friends
when you pass them at night under the silvery, silvery citibank lights
arm in arm in arm and eyes and eyes glazing under
oh you wouldn’t want an angel watching over
surprise, surprise they wouldn’t wanna watch
another uninnocent, elegant fall into the unmagnificent lives of adults
It’s that last line that Berninger sings almost as an afterthought in the post-chorus bridge that bears repeating:
another uninnocent, elegant fall into the unmagnificent lives of adults
Lyrics, meet literature.
Everything Hits at Once 