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Foals: Balloons

12 votes
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by Kev Kharas

Foals are tidy boys. They’re thrifty with a sound, one that’s been developed over years and now signs its name in some indecipherable hand at the bottom of every track. The tossed-off squiggle of letters is quickly becoming a symbol in its own right though, and it'll be tagged over loads of walls next year. Guitar played low on the neck grows into curls and trebles like sprouting ivy vines wrestling the thing out of Foals’ hands. The bass is decent enough to keep things under, though.

Foals reject the slut aesthetic. There’s nothing loose about them, not on record at least; it’s all hemmed and close and tight and buttoned-collar chestwear. The precision is such that the dignity seems unavoidable rather than deliberate at times, and the band sound slightly awkward with and wary of that, attacking the guitars with hacking synths and playful, threatening outsider toots of brass added by whatever sod is tweaking Edwin's Korg. Leading the charge is Yannis Philippakis and his throat and Jack Bevan and his sticks, like crow-beaks getting at a coke can. Hack, hack, hack. Still the guitar grows though, wrought and taut and all of that shit.

Just fucking dance? With me? It's not 'Hummer' or 'Mathletics' but it is, undeniably, Foals.

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  • Foals 7 / 10

But it is, undeniably, shit.

Indie tossers should be shot with a harpoon gun.


ha...

well, i like it! better than the previous two singles. the first one (try this on your piano) was fucking GOLD though!


Brazil is here

is fairly awful. Baloons is good. not great.


I

don't really see how anyone cannot possibly like this band... They're just excellent.


I don't like anything I've heard of them

because I find them too cold and precise


This version

isn't a patch on the demo version that was knocking about a year or so ago.


I don't, I hate them

Because they sound like someone trying so hard to make a sound that they fall flat on their face in cold, frozen ice of boring sound. There is no fun there, it's empty and vacuous.

Whenever I see someone trying to compare them to Q and not U I think they must be blind to the power of charisma in a band or something. Foals just aren't special, to me at least.

On a superficial note, I can't believe that the singer has gone from not just having a wanky shoreditch indie undercut to actually having a little shoreditch tache. How hilariously ironic. Ticking all the boxes are we?


jeez

this song is unbelievably bad


the riff sounds like razorlight

the one from "to the sea".

a bit.