Monday 10/05/10 Foals @ Electric Ballroom, London

 

So you could almost set your watch by them being on stage on time to showcase their second album 'Total Life Forever'. Clearly the warning signs were there, and yet I still managed to get caught frantically stuffing change in my pocket at the bar as the opening chimes of title-track ‘Total Life Forever’ rang out around the Electric Ballroom in Camden.

 

As it turns out, Foals seem buoyed by momentum tonight. The opener is a little clunky and not altogether the bombastic start we might expect, but with every passing note Foals seem to piece themselves together into a more than cohesive unit.

 

‘Cassius’ begins the mass sing-alongs and ‘Blue Blood’ really finds a band finding their groove. Yannis’s echoing vocals may work better on record but it’s the bassline which sounds electric under the lights, vibrating against your feet and rippling up your body.

 

The band are at their best when they slip into their own little bubble it would seem. The sumptuous climax of an outstanding ‘Spanish Sahara’ slips effortlessly into the frenzied drum beats of ‘Red Sock Pugie’ – how they can meld those two tracks together I’ll never know.

 

Naturally it is the older tracks which have the most frenzied response. Set closer ‘Electric Bloom’ sees Yannis going into overdrive while the encore is even more intense. The brass section comes out and ‘The French Open’ is met with sheer joy. For such a simple, oblique song it has certainly caught the imagination of all Foals fans.

 

You can hear the refrain of ‘Two Steps, Twice’ long before it actually airs. It’s a song which is transformed live – snaking from gentle guitar interplay right into a gigantic marauding chorus which ensures Foals leave on a high.

 

From a restrained start to a euphoric finale, tonight was just a case of Foals building enough momentum up to blow us all off our feet.