Foals

If Foals didn't exist in 2008, it would be necessary to invent them. Produced by TV on the Radio's Dave Sitek, their debut combines an absurd array of au courant sounds, including the frisky guitars and swelling horns of indie rock's crush on Afrobeat ("The French Open"); the slight-of-hand rhythms of 2007 math-stros Battles ("Two Steps Twice"); and the soaring post-punk of Brit acts like Bloc Party ("Electric Bloom"). This may sound too stylish for its own good (and it sometimes is), but then the twinkling guitars of "Big Big Love" hit, and you don't need a faux-hawk to enjoy those.

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" sinc... More >