FEATURE:
Vinyl Corner
Foals – Total Life Forever
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ON this occasion…
PHOTO CREDIT: Getty
I want to feature Foals’ second studio album, Total Life Forever, into Vinyl Corner. This is an album that is also quite underrated. Released on 10th May, 2010 through Transgressive Records, it is a fantastic record that I would urge people to see out on vinyl. There are some epic cuts from the album. Spanish Sahara and This Orient are possibly the best-known songs from Total Life Forever. Some reviewers at the time noted how the album has contrasting moods and it is not as consistent as it could have been. There were some mixed reviews and a whiff of disappointment in many reviews. That being said, Total Life Forever was shortlisted for the 2010 Mercury Music Prize and has been named as one of the best albums of the 2010s by a few publications. It is a great record where one does not have to know about Foals and their history to enjoy. Quite different to their 23008 debut, Antidotes, Total Life Forever is a beautiful record that has so many highpoints. The reason I would select it for vinyl consideration is the quality of the production (from Luke Smith) and the immersive nature of the songs. Listening to Total Life Forever is quite an experience. There are a couple of reviews that I want to draw in.
One, from AllMusic, has positives to it – yet there is a sense that some fans might not be completely on board by the changes and developments between Antidotes and Total Life Forever:
“After Foals scrapped the mix of their debut, Antidotes, by TV on the Radio’s Dave Sitek, it was clear that they were a band that was interested in creating their own sound. That sentiment may be why their follow-up, Total Life Forever, sounds more like a reaction to their first record than a continuation of it. Many of the elements that drove Foals into the spotlight in the first place are definitely still in place. There’s plenty of cascading, Minus the Bear-style guitar work and funky Talking Heads influence in their math-pop-meets-the-dancefloor rhythms. What’s missing is the edge. Total Life Forever is considerably more subdued than its predecessor, lacking much of the uptempo thump found on Antidotes. In its place is a mellower, more spacious sound. While this new sound is still danceable, it’s far more refined than the angular post-punk riffing that fans might be expecting. Right from the beginning, the album-opening, “Blue Blood” makes it clear that Foals are taking a different, more patient approach to songwriting, letting the song build and build on itself as it methodically works itself into a frenzy before leaving the way it came in. Because of the changes here, fans of the early, pre-Antidotes singles may find Total Life Forever to be too restrained, lacking the youthful vigor of their debut. Where some see restraint, others may very well see refinement, and those who appreciated Antidotes' more spacy passages will find that Foals' reinvention of their sound is a calculated risk that definitely pays off”.
I will finish with an NME review. There is a little more passion and positivity in their words. I feel Total Life Forever is an album that got mostly positive feedback in 2010. In years since, it has been re-envaulted and reappraised. It has definitely risen in value through time. This is what NME said in their review from 2010:
“Pity Foals. All they ever wanted was a steady supply of Rizlas and to play weird music. Unfortunately they wrote a couple of songs some kids enjoyed dancing to, but then had the temerity to follow them with an excellent, underrated debut that sounded nothing like ‘Hummer’ and ‘Mathletics’. Then they decided one cult hero producer wasn’t the right fit and, understandably, looked elsewhere, but all anyone wanted to know was why they’d fucked off the guy from TV On The Radio. Meanwhile, they were selling out huge venues – huge for a band who can legitimately cite Don bloody Caballero as an influence – making countless young feet dance and quietly slipping onto major label Warner, but only now does their music feel… comfortable. Not in the easy-listening sense, but ‘Total Life Forever’ crawls and creeps like a tender portrait of their paranoid selves in the way that ‘Antidotes’ always threatened to: it is nervous, intense and quite brilliant.
It pivots on the staggering ‘Spanish Sahara’, by now familiar but still such a treat with its blossoming guitars and gently relentless momentum, and ‘Black Gold’, hooked around a Mike Tyson quote and tripping acrobatically between the stuttering disco-punk of their past and something teasingly expansive. Either side lie the title track and single ‘This Orient’, equally buoyed by Yannis Philippakis’ sparse vocals (he’s singing smoothly rather than barking this time, which is perhaps the biggest single change) and a new-found sense of freedom that means they can flick around from the staccato rhythms of the former to the eye-wateringly bright pop of the latter and still sound like the same band. It’s that playfulness that makes ‘Total Life Forever’ so much fun.
Witness ‘Miami’, one of the most extroverted songs Foals have ever made. It is that rarest of beasts – a colossal pop song that is clever enough to appear dumb, being as it is as much of a genre-splicing mash-up of hip-hop and post-punk as anything MIA could conceive. And ‘After Glow’ has something of a woozy 6am comedown about it, spreading out over six minutes before curling up in a corner after a flurry of beatsy percussion. ‘Blue Blood’ is the last remnant of that Afrobeat tag that has dogged them unnecessarily for years. All fundamentally different. All superbly consistent.
Thematically, ‘Total Life Forever’ is isolated, cold and worried about what’s to come: “I know a place where I can go when I’m low”, hums the title track; “Don’t forget everything we cared for”, pleads ‘After Glow’; ‘Black Gold’ warns “the future’s not what it used to be”. Emotions are hinted at and almost always obscured in a thick mist of imagery; whole songs turn on a sixpence. In the wrong hands such a wilfully oblique tone would be frustrating – further ammunition for the imagination-starved minceheads who claim Foals are too clinical to be worthy of love – but throughout the album the neuroses of its fathers are presented not only unflinchingly but in a winningly human way. If you’re reading this and are the parent of any particular Foal, phone them. Offer a hug. Sounds like they need it.
Sure, ‘Total Life Forever’ is flawed – it takes half a dozen listens before the quality of it really sinks in, and is so all over the place that only the most devoted won’t find it initially maddening. But throughout is a braveness and naive sense of wonder (through the perfect murk of Luke ‘Clor’ Smith’s production shines the will of a band who want to keep pressing buttons until something magical happens) that confirms what ‘Antidotes’ suggested: that Foals will never be anything other than Foals, and if we follow them into the fog then, well, visions of startling clarity await”.
Go and check out an album that, eleven years after its release, is still being played and praised. The second album from the Oxford band, I think that Total Life Forever might be their strongest work. If you have never listened to Total Life Forever, go and check it out. Owning the album on vinyl gives the songs and sound extra consideration. It provides a different listening experience compared to listening digitally. Even if some were not entirely convinced by Foals’ Total Life Forever in 2010, I think that it is…
A remarkable release from the band.