Foals - My Number

Oh Foals, how we’ve missed you. Who else can turn funk into an art? Who else adds conga and bongo to their tracks without looking utterly ridiculous?

Well, Talking Heads used to master such daring feats. And the comparisons to ‘My Number’ will nod almost entirely to the time David Byrne found love in African polyrhythms. This new track isn’t so much a drastic shift in sound, more a subtle refining of the ‘Miami’’s and ‘Total Life Forever’’s of the group’s previous record. Muted guitar lines are swept in from all sides, surrounding Yannis Phillippakis’ cries, which go from slight yelp to shameless bellow in the space of four minutes. It’s terrifying.

It’s also alarmingly similar to the songs on Talking Heads’ ‘Remain In Light’ album, not in the sense that the former are ripping off the latter with some half-hearted version of ‘Once In A Lifetime’, more that both bands are brilliantly pulling off the same fancy tricks. Foals master repetition, here. You’d think the initial bursts of life in the opening verse would drag on if stretched out beyond the three-minute-mark, but the melody persists and the track only gains in intensity. Yannis and co.’s signature, strangling build is crucial, turning a friendly tune into a grizzly beast, not too dissimilar to the kind we encounter in the previously unveiled ‘Inhaler’. Third album ‘Holy Fire’ is shaping up to be quite the achievement.