Yannis Philippakis
(Picture: Redferns)With their 2019 two-part album Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost, Oxford-formed Foals were at their most menacing yet, beckoning in the impending apocalypse with a nihilistic smirk, and letting the haunting empty space at the heart of stand-out moments like Neptune whip up into a cacophonous scream. Then, as we all know too well, the world took a dark turn into prolonged isolation, while gig venues were bolted shut for the foreseeable future. Accordingly, Yannis Philippakis and band – now a three-piece after the departure of keyboardist Edwin Congreave – opted to ditch the doom.
Out next month, Foals’ seventh album Life Is Yours embraces brighter climes; or, as their frontman put it speaking to NME, the idea of “music that would be a forcefield against the darkness” instead. As the jangling, fidgeting guitar lines of that album’s lead single Wake Me Up burst into life at Brixton Academy, pops of cyan and yellow pasted across an imposing light-bar made way for vivid pink flowers while the band showcased their danciest leanings yet. An airing of unreleased new album cut 2001 was powered by an infectious nu-disco strut, yearning for togetherness again. “I’m living all day inside,” Philippakis sang, “waiting for the summer sky.”
Over a decade in, far away from the havoc-wreaking upstarts who destroyed countless house parties with the angular chaos of 2008’s debut album Antidotes, Foals are polished festival headliners by now, with a finely-tuned back-catalogue to match. Occasionally at Brixton, this came at the expense of offering something new, and the set-list was distinctly lacking in deeper cuts or left turns. A live rarity or reworked version – in the vein of 2020’s Collected Reworks – might’ve sweetened the deal slightly.
Still, these were but minor gripes, and by now it’s obvious that Foals are one of the most powerful acts spearheading UK indie rock. Though Philippakis was on typically searing form, spitting the roaring refrain of What Went Down up on the barriers, and dedicating Olympic Airways’ warm chemtrails to the sun-drenched Sunday leading up to Foals’ gig, drummer Jack Bevan was equally charismatic, urging the room to crouch on the floor ahead of Spanish Sahara’s sprawling second half erupting into life, and aiming a perfectly tossed drum-stick at a reveller on a mate’s shoulders to huge cheers.
Departing in a blizzard of roses, scattered into the front row by Philippakis, the set closed out – in now-traditional fashion – with the uneasy interplay of debut cut Two Steps, Twice. Though it might be a tried-and-tested gig closer by now, it also felt like the perfect demonstration of just how far Foals have come; all without losing grip on the magical outpouring of energy that set even their earliest releases apart.
