Foals
Total Life Forever

It's not easy to review an album like this. The reasons are many, but the main one that encapsulates them all is perhaps disorientation.

This album has a particular atmosphere, permeated with mystery and crossed by a constant sense of unease. The voices sound distant and inhuman in almost all the tracks. The synth reverberations and the guitar delays make the compositions elusive, often redundant, and in some cases at the limit of tolerance.
It's not easy to describe these songs; it wasn't even easy to listen to them. Special attention must be given to “Total Life Forever,” an album far from commerciality that sounds impersonal and detached.
I can say that the strongest impression it leaves is the feeling of listening to it underwater (note the cover...).

A couple of years ago, Foals gained significant attention after the release of the more than decent debut “Antidotes,” characterized by modern and danceable punk-rock. But who would have bet half a penny on the careers of these five Oxford lads? Most (myself included) would have signed off for another couple of anonymous records, increasingly uninspired, in the wake of their debut.

Instead, the Foals proved to be a chrysalis, blossoming into an otherworldly butterfly in this second album. An example to follow for many bands that don't know how to find their direction once the spotlight is on them.
In this sense, retreating to Sweden to record this second work was instructive for the band, far from everything and everyone.

“Blue Blood,” the opening track, for the first minute makes us believe we've put on a Fleet Foxes album (mainly due to the vocal tone), only to transform into a nervous pop ballad, enriched by the skillful touches of guitars.
“Miami,” the following piece, seems taken from a Cure album. “Total Life Forever” is an energetic black funky-soul with a piano that again recalls the Cure. “Black Gold” is perhaps the emblem of the album's elusiveness: initially disco of the '70s, it has a Sting-like chorus and an Interpol-like finale.
Tracks like “This Orient” and “2 Trees” blatantly show the legacy of bands such as Doves and Elbow, moreover identifiable throughout this work.
“After Glow” is the most beautiful track. Its dual structure seems to let us hear a musical dialogue, the hypnotic bass, and the echoes of the choirs catapult us into a dream with blurred edges. The second half, in which it transforms into frenetic rock, unfortunately, does not match the first.
“Alabaster” instead, is an example of arrangement excess due to the group's desire to overdo it. The ending is even ruined; only indistinct noise can be perceived.

“Total Life Forever” is a good album that requires multiple listens, it needs to be tamed by our ears as if it were a wild thoroughbred out of our control.

In the fluid element, in its crystalline inconsistency, mutable and never static, in its fleeting gleams, the Foals seem to have found their dimension. Far from the sea of banality, they have built a pool made of authentic musicality and sound research. So, welcome such inscrutable albums in times when everything seems taken for granted.