Foals
Holy Fire

The Oxford five have garnered a decent success with their first two albums, whose flaw, however, was being somewhat raw and confined in excessive aggressiveness. The 3rd album, "Holy Fire," is a mature album.

Without pretensions of episteme, the thought runs after positive sensations from the 4th piece, "Bad Habit." The first 3 tracks are an obstacle: one must not stop at the heaviness of "Inhaler" nor be dazzled by the pandering "My Number," the soundtrack single of Fifa 2014. Between the 3rd and 4th piece, there is a break: while the 3rd demands to grab attention, the 4th introduces the atmosphere of the album. The silence between track number 3 and number 4 is therefore a bridge, leading from form to content. And from here on, the album communicates homogeneity, completeness, and simplicity.

The theme of the album is the search. Each song deals with a different search; here it's enough to know it's an emotional search. Emotions need to be categorized, each emotion has its category of belonging. And it is necessary to do this in a world that is in economic crisis, but here it doesn’t concern us, and of ideas, and here it does. The idea is the emotional container, which creates worlds and meanings only if it is subjectivized, that is, loaded with meaning. And the search means an attempt to give emotions a direction, guided by ideas.

And Foals overload with meaning through an instrumental aggressiveness that now blends well with the pop taste that pervades the album. Some rides ("Providence," "Out of the Woods") are examples of a decidedly catchy melody that, combined with more frenetic parts that convey unease, shine within the album. These two and the subsequent form the emotional acme of the album, which then dissolves through the 2 concluding pieces that instead lead the atmosphere back to a flat calm.

From a lyrical standpoint, nothing new: the artist is a researcher/communicator of emotions and the musician is their most immediate messenger for the simplicity of their language and the emotions are there. From an instrumental perspective, however, they have abandoned aimless aggressiveness, and it seems they have found their dimension: their energy is more accessible here. You can still feel a bit of heaviness in "Inhaler," but overall they have reached a remarkable synthesis ability that communicates freshness and maturity.

Among my favorites of 2013.