For their adventurous debut, this Oxford quintet recorded with
TV on the Radio's
Dave Sitek; the schizophrenic result is both twenty-first-century Brit
pop (see Bloc Party) and nuevo New York art rock (see Battles). On
"Electric Bloom," the combination is magic: Interlocking guitars and
glints of electro-metallic percussion swarm around intimations of
disaster, with maybe the most compelling enunciation of the word
"hospital" since the first Modern Lovers LP. Later, a metronomic guitar
pulse recalls minimalist composer Steve Reich, while vocalist Yannis
Philippakis confides, "We fry balloons on a steel cologne!" Or
something like that: Philippakis loves further obscuring cryptic lyrics
with his delirious yawps. Mostly that's fine, since sublimely hypnotic
arrangements of horn bursts and techno glitch beats generally render
meaning unnecessary. But all that yelping about "electric shocks" ("Big
Big Love [Fig. 2]") might be better buried in a dub mix. And if the
pledge to "fight these vampires" ("Heavy Water") is a veiled threat to
fellow buzz band Vampire Weekend, Foals may need to revisit their rhyme
book.
