When Oxford-based, Skins-soundtracking and artfully bullish quintet Foals released their debut album Antidotes in 2008 the idea of them ever courting a crowd at the Royal Albert Hall into absolute frenzy, or be battling it out for a UK album chart No.1 spot (as they are with What Went Down) was almost laughable. Certainly the band themselves would have been reluctant to humour such ideas. However their ascension has been sonically track-able, 2013’s Holy Fire their most unashamedly high-reaching release thus far. Frontman Yannis Philippakis has often talked in interviews about how, since the deliberately cryptic debut, everything Foals have done has been about “stripping down” and “making his toes curl lyrically” via a more direct, simplistic embellishment. It makes sense then that What Went Down is their biggest and most “mainstream” record to date.
It begins with the by now well-loved title track. A predatory and tenacious mish-mash of barn-storming rock and Nick Cave-esque story-telling, it’s the heaviest thing they’ve recorded to date. However, the now 29-year-old Philippakis has said that his lyrics on What Went Down were partly informed by “staring down the barrel of the big 3 0”, and aside from the opener the best moments here have a sense of almost coming-of-age-esque romanticism to them.
“Mountain at My Gates” is, at its core, a cyclical and almost baggy-inspired pop track and one of the most crystal clear Foals has ever written, and Philippakis indulges in the visual but this time more simplistic imagery he’s touted recently (sample lyric: “I see a fire out by the lake”). “Birch Tree” recalls the band’s Total Life Forever vision with its chilly atmospherics and sparse production with Yannis fleshing out a sense of loneliness; “My heart’s an opal dancer, troubled romancer you know/ It’s a subway chancer, a question with no answer”.
There are mournful ghosts at the centre of “Give It All,” Philippakis longing for the chance to correct past mistakes and searching for the sense of guidance one needs to survive adulthood. A glacial, synth-led ballad that reaches vast spaciousness, it’s Foals’ most stadium sized moment to date. “Night Swimmers” harks back to the afrobeat-inspired, tricksy math pop of Foals of yesteryear, and is perhaps one of the most beautiful tracks they’ve ever written, Yannis exposing his Shakespearian touch as he sings “you count up all of my scars, crumble them into stars”. The solemn, almost trip-hop inflected “London Thunder” is one of the What Went Down’s most stripped down moments, with Yannis asserting that “Now I’m older, I’ll look for something else to hold on to”. The majestic closer “A Knife In The Ocean” feels like a vindicated, soulful summary of an emotional journey, the resulting residue of a hundred memories and events all wrapped up into a bout of post-rock.
This new sense of simplicity on What Went Down does occasionally fall short though, especially given the moulds Foals have shaken up in the past. Penultimate track “Lonely Hunter” makes the faux-pas of being completely unremarkable. “Albatross” has a sense of post- Kid A Radiohead experimentation in its underbelly, but the fact it never relieves it’s build up tension means that its final passage isn’t that attention-nabbing. “Snake Oil” moulds itself from the same crushing foundations as the title track but suffers from a sense of corniness, both in its U2-trying-to-go-heavy riffing and lyrics like “you cast a spell that keeps me wired, keeps me on fire”.
One thing Foals have always been great at is keeping the listener guessing as to where they’ll venture next, and although What Went Down is their most radio-friendly release to date, the likelihood of them completing a complete U-turn on their next release and releasing an instrumental post-rock/ ambient record is as likely as ever. They are a band who totally deserve to be judged on their own merits at any given moment, and What Went Down is an often brilliant, often hungry record that refines its ideas while remaining a blast of fresh air.
Rating: 4/5