What Went Down // Foals
Upon the day, during which, its title track graced radio listeners ears, as a powerful taster of what laid in waiting, it was clear that What Went Down was set to more than likely raise the bar once again for Foals. Though it didn’t make clear just how diverse a record it’d prove to be – that part was left to the epic odyssey that is ‘A Knife In the Ocean’. Somewhat of a far cry from the more experimental days of chanting the Lacoste slogan; “Un peu d’air sur la terre” repeatedly throughout Antidotes’ opening track, the album imparts a broad spectrum of audible essences: from the contemplative to the assertive, the playful to the sorrowful, the extravagant and adventurous to the haunting yet comforting and so on. For my money its their most complete effort to date, almost as if they looked back and took every exceptional element from each of their previous three, and somehow succeeded in weaving them all together to produce one of the best records of the past year.
Words by Alex Graham