FOALS | LIVE REVIEW
Great Hall, Cardiff University Students Union, Sun 8 Nov
An audience of young and old, teenage fangirls and music loving students wait patiently for the band of the moment, Foals. Electropop band Real Lies open the show: a Professor Green lookalike frontman half-rapping about being young and adrift alongside an Alex Turner wannabe and a generic boyband member, an 80s synthpop group-cum-guitar band. It’s too much at once and didn’t really work, leaving me wondering why a band as big as Foals didn’t have someone more suitable as support.
The lights go down and the opening sample from Snake Oil is played over an empty stage, as the members of Foals ascend one at a time. It merges into their newest single, the funky, crowdpleasing Mountain At My Gates, met with a cheer and the audience singing back at vocalist Yannis Philippakis. A throwback to their first album, Olympic Airways, features math-rock-inspired, intricate guitar work by Jimmy Smith and chants of “Dis-ap-pe-ar” that gets the audience more involved.
Yannis Philippakis asks if Cardiff is “fucking ready?” and claims that they’d turn this “Sunday night show into a Saturday night show”, but this proves easier said than done. Foals seem tired after a week of playing up and down the country, slogging through their songs impatiently, trying to get to the end of the set. The heavily distorted Providence incites a full-blown fight in the crowd amidst many a moshpit, before Knife In The Ocean, Late Night and Spanish Sahara bring the energy back down again. You feel Foals could have done more to make it bigger and better; the performance doesn’t have to be small just because the venue is.
They finish with the meticulous Red Socks Pugie and Inhaler before leaving the stage after an hour. The following encore could have been much longer than three songs – where was smash hit Total Life Forever or early favourite, the brassy Cassius? Disappointingly, we miss out on most of the big tunes save for debut single Hummer and their latest, What Went Down. Not only does this highlight the development of their music over the last few years, but also how the band members have grown with it. What Went Down finds Philippakis running through the audience, and for a long while he appears lost in the crowd. He reappears hoisted over punters’ heads, shouting “When I see a man I see a lion!” with all the energy one can muster when horizontal.
Foals closed with the customary Two Steps, Twice – probably the most memorable of all songs played that night, fans singing the chorus in the pub for hours afterwards. The gig ends far too early for everyone’s liking, were out of the doors by five past ten. This tour was likely a precursor to a bigger arena tour in 2016, and that’s what this show felt like: a warmup by a brilliant band who were just a little tired.
words HELEN PAYNE photo NABIL ELDERKIN
