It’s been a long journey since their debut album in 2008, but Oxford’s Foals now have all the trappings of a properly big band. Their first number one album came in 2019, they went on a UK arena tour earlier this year and will be headliners at both Glastonbury’s Other Stage and the Latitude festival this summer. Usually for British groups at this point, the role models are either U2 or Radiohead: somewhere on a line between arty and pompous, but either way taking yourselves very seriously indeed.
Well they tried that, last time around, releasing the sprawling, intense Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost as two albums seven months apart in 2019. It earned them the Brit Award for Best Group and their third Mercury Prize nomination, and seems to have seen them reach a peak in terms of ambition.
