Rapid Fire Reviews: Indie Make It Dance Again with Foals, Hot Chip & Everything Everything

At some point in any great indie bands career, for some reason, they turn to a more synthetic and often more dancy sound. This isn't perfectly true for the pipeline of all three of these acts but it comes in varying degrees and covering them all together just made sense. 

Life Is Yours - Foals

I didn't review this record right when it came out because I thought I knew what Foals were doing. After Part 2 of their previous studio effort failed to impress despite a great and hard-hitting lead single, they had turned towards making what is ostensibly a synth-pop album. I was wrong. Unlike many bands who enter the fray having abandoned their songwriting principles completely, Foals actually manage to bring out a number of catchy hooks alongside their ever-present satisfying compositions. The first half of this record features one shimmering high point after another as we breeze through a trilogy of singles that I wasn't crazy about at first but make the start of the record SUCH a breeze in practice. In particular, there's 2001 which worked its way onto my summer playlist where I fell totally in love with its irresistible grooves and charming breathy hook. Unfortunately, the second half of the record isn't nearly as instantaneous and while there are elements of what it delivers that I like, the clicky synth leads on Under The Radar, for instance, it's definitely a hefty drop in overall quality. Thankfully the closing track is decent and saves the record from ending on a real tumble but it's still strong contrast between the two sides. While their turn into dance and synth-led music was nowhere near the bland popification that often happens to indie acts, they are still inconsistent at holding my interest throughout. Much in the same way Foals has become an underrated presence in indie music as the years have gone by, this is one of the most digestible transitions of its kind that I've ever heard. 6/10

Freakout/Release - Hot Chip

Even though I would never describe myself as any kind of Hot Chip die hard I do think they went on a run of albums that served as really exciting dance-pop and proved they had an incredible ability to create catchy instrumental passages and lace memorable refrains into them perfectly. I wasn't a big fan of the band's 2015 album Why Make Sense? but they started to win me over on the follow-up A Bath Full Of Ecstasy a few years later. I was hoping they would continue down a part of some of the really interesting sounds and textures they explored across that record and in a sense they sort of do. The singles are exciting but at their core still do get back to some of the simple fundamentals of the band's music. Moments like the guitar on the end of the title track and the bouncy hook on the opener Down do manage to be standout moments though. Speaking of standout moments there are certainly tracks in the mix that I like quite a bit. The romantic pseudo-ballad Not Alone scratches a kind of itch that doesn't normally get much attention on a Hot Chip record. The completely out-of-nowhere rap verse on The Evil That Men Do saves the song from its otherwise pretty boring fate. There are also numerous instrumental elements I like a lot with moments like the booming drums on Guilty and the record's repeated deployment of disco beats. All things considered, there are plenty of compliments I can give to this record but it's all in specific details and I think the record often fails to assemble these details into compelling songs. In particular having to listen to Time and Miss The Bliss back to back repeatedly showed me just how much boring refrains can sap all the life out of an otherwise bright and punchy dance record. Hot Chip have far too strong fundamentals to ever release anything truly bad, but this isn't exactly the comeback I was hoping for. 5.5/10

Raw Data Feel - Everything Everything

It was only a matter of time before I covered this. Even though I wasn't head over heels for the bands past two albums they both did contain some of my favorite songs of their respective years, Night Of The Long Knives and Violent Sun specifically. So of course I had to indulge with this and see if there was yet another diamond in the rough, but what I found was that it wasn't so rough in the first place. This album is an adorably strange ode to technology as a crush to deal with mental health issues that features the brightest and most exciting sound palette I've heard on an Everything Everything record in years. On top of that great foundation, the band are still great songwritiers and absolutely pack these tracks full of not only sticky hooks but incredibly memorable pieces of instrumentation. To see it in action look no further than the pair of singles Bad Friday and Pizza Boy which feature weird wordy refrains and hilarious calls out about Pepsi respectfully, yet I find both to be completely irresistible. I didn't give them credit when they were originally released as singles but it's clear now that I just hadn't seen the full picture yet and listening to the album proper helped it click VERY quickly. If the record has one achilles heel it's length. While the tracklist is long at 54 minutes it isn't exceedingly long and the problems with length come more in the individual songs taking up much more time than necessary. Leviathan is a perfect example of a song that really does have a spectacular moment in its runtime, a dark and dramatic hook that pierces through the quiet bridge, but the journey getting there is close to not even being worth the payoff. That's combined with a handful of tracks that feel like they should have been really obviously left behind all of which comes together to hold it back from its full potential. Despite my issues with the album and the generally unspectacular second half I have to admit I like this record more than the group's previous two projects and their continued mastery of hooky refrains has me looking forward to what they do next all over again. 6.5/10