Show Review: Foals @ The Hollywood Palladium
When you consider that Foals has dubbed their creative studio space in Oxford “the stinkbox,” everything else makes sense: their no-nonsense albums, the kick-the-door-in live shows, and especially maniacal frontman Yannis Philippakis’ relentless and abundant “fuck you” confidence.
Foals formed in 2005, and Antidotes followed in 2008. With 2015’s What Went Down, they are four major releases deep. As such, Foals’ youthful name belies their place in the game as, technically, a foal becomes a colt or a filly after a year. Considering their crashing-about energy, however, the moniker still holds true.
Opening with instrumental “Prelude,” the first track on 2013 release Holy Fire, Foals set the table for a true to form crushing set. Jack Bevan’s drums pulverized from the get go, the hirsute Philippakis emitted nothing but swagger.
Philippakis is known to have explored Ray Kurzweil’s theory of singularity, a theme that reportedly influenced Foals’ 2010 album, Total Life Forever. If the radical scientific prediction eventually comes to be, any human-slash-computer energy will be impossible to replicate. Save perhaps for Future Islands’ Samuel Herring, there isn’t a frontman with more driving force in music today.
With the rest of Foals at his back, they are a band dialed up to between 8 and 11 at all times. With other acts, such a constant barrage often falls short as contrived theater, too reliant on mindless testosterone overload to rev up their listeners. Foals, on the other hand, whips up an art-rock assault that is none of the above.
Synth and Rhodes work throughout the set by Jimmy Smith and Edwin Congreave color Foals’ songs with a sense of depth and grandeur, especially noticeable on “Prelude” and later in encore selection “What Went Down.”
Professional troublemaker Yannis Philippakis engaged the audience directly a few times, praising it as the best LA crowd Foals has ever played to, baptizing the first few rows with water or beer bottles. He dedicated “Late Night” to the local “snake charmers and wannabe astronauts,” a colorful illustration of LA’s dreamers.
Timely tributes continued with “A Knife In The Ocean,” a song that “is about the bad shit that can happen when you vote the wrong people into power.” The tune built up its own wall of sound with broad sonic strokes, then the jam released into an outro constructed of feedback echo.
The Palladium reached a frenzied fever pitch on set closer “Inhaler,” as evidenced by fearless crowd surfers and a thick rock funk that momentarily teased none other than our own anthemic “California Love.”
When banger “What Went Down” started the encore, its spitting lyrics admitted bitter surrender: “I buried my heart in a hole in the ground / With the lights and the roses and the cowards downtown…I fell for a girl with a port wine stain / I knew her initials but never her name.”
The crowd returned the song’s energy, its mainstream appeal creating an almost archaic communal energy that is born when a song has touched the masses via the stubborn heft of a channel like terrestrial radio.
The spider-like creep intro of final song “Two Steps, Twice” progressed into an angular LCD vibe, then cascading drums, and finally, Philippakis literally standing on the shoulders of the crowd.
When he returned, the show finished, Jimmy Smith’s guitar lay on the stage, discarded upon his own exit. Perhaps in his path, or perhaps not, Philippakis gave it a swift kick across the stage in one direction, before exiting in the other.
All put together, the juggernaut that is Foals emits antics well deserving of the praise of their fans. They have the sound of a band trying to outrun themselves and an overall style that feels familiar amongst the great rock ‘n roll bands
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