Album Focus: Foals – 'Antidotes'

Hi, I'm Nate Lanxon and this is Encoded's Album Focus show, where I'll tell you about this week's hottest release.

This time around, we're having a journey into Antidotes, the new album from indie hypemongers Foals, which, once you get past all the media pant-soiling of late, shows its potential to be a killer release for 2008.

The first thing you notice about Antitdotes is that last year's two big singles 'Hummer' and 'Mathletics' don't features on the album. Some might see this as commercial suicide, what with 'Hummer' appearing in that diabolical, yet popular Skins TV show, and 'Mathletics' getting healthy radio play. But not the Oxford five-piece, who having spent months re-shaping and recording their tracks with TV On The Radio's David Sitek in Brooklyn, felt there was no place for the two tracks among the soundscape they'd created.

And they were right, because from album opener 'The French Open' through to closing track 'Tron', Antidotes is a journey through precise, intricate, layered instrumentation, which despite having plenty of chin-scratching moments, still packs enough of a bassy, snarey kick to keep the kids dancing.

'Olympic Airways', the fourth track on the album is the perfect example of this, a slow-building techy epic that crescendos into a huge wall of layered sound before dropping into a disco hi-hat breakdown that I dare you not to start chair-dancing to.

The only negative thing to say about Antitdotes is that if you're one of the people who got into Foals last year through their high-speed, high-energy, heavy heavy barrage of a live show, then this is not the band you're going to hear on this album, but then even that can be turned into a positive, because if you get this album and then go and see them live, you're sure to have your face torn clean off.

That's all from me. Next week we'll be descending into self-induced madness with the Brian Jonestown Massacre's new album My Bloody Underground, so until then, remember to brush your teeth methodically each morning, because no one likes people with bad breath.