Life Is Yours Foals

• 1 Life Is Yours 04:12
• 2 Wake Me Up 04:23
• 3 2am 03:44
• 4 2001 04:26
• 5 (summer sky) 00:36
• 6 Flutter 03:35
• 7 Looking High 04:21
• 8 Under The Radar 02:59
• 9 Crest of the Wave 03:46
• 10 The Sound 04:25
• 11 Wild Green 05:27
• Total Runtime 41:54

Info for Life Is Yours

Disco-gefärbte Gitarren, tighte, synkopierte Rhythmen und druckvolle, eindringliche Hooks – „Life Is Yours“ ist eine natürliche Weiterentwicklung, mit der Foals zugleich den großen Bogen bis zu ihren frühen Tagen schlagen – damals, als Yannis und Co. mit ihrer Musik Hauspartys im heimischen Oxford aufmischten. Thematisch geht es viel um Eskapismus, darum, an andere, bessere Orte zu entfliehen. Und sich an den endlosen Möglichkeiten des Lebens zu erfreuen. Damit spiegelt das Album auf perfekte Weise ein – zumindest bis vor einigen Tagen – zunehmend vorherrschendes Gefühl wider: das öffentliche Leben kehrt in seiner früheren Unbeschwertheit zurück und die Welt ist in kollektiver Lebenslust vereint. Was nun nach dem Angriff auf die Ukraine passiert, kann niemand voraussagen. Fest steht, dass positive Musik in jeglicher Situation eine wichtige Funktion erfüllt.

Und davon hat „Life Is Yours” reichlich zu bieten. Yannis Philippakis kommentiert: „‚Everything Not Saved...' fühlte sich wie ein Scheitelpunkt an, in den alle Facetten unseres bisherigen Sounds einflossen. Daher wollten wir dieses Mal neue Wege finden, uns auszudrücken. Wir wollten unseren Fokus neu ausrichten und etwas machen, das sich wie eine gemeinsame DNA durch die Songs zieht: eine Körperlichkeit, eine Tanzbarkeit, angefüllt mit Energie und Lebensfreude. Es ist definitiv die poppigste Platte, die wir je gemacht haben."

Foals – komplettiert durch Jimmy Smith und Jack Bevan – begannen ihr neues Projekt in der dunklen, fensterlosen Enge ihres Proberaums im Süden Londons, während draußen der bedrückende Lockdown-Winter regierte. Kaum verwunderlich, dass sie sich in dieser Situation zu lebensfrohen Sounds hingezogen fühlten, die von einer besseren Zukunft kündeten – nicht nur klimatisch, sondern auch in Bezug auf den einzigarten Kick von Liveauftritten – wer jemals die notorisch überbordende Bühnenenergie von Yannis Philippakis erleben durfte, weiß, wieso. Als der Kreativprozess in die Zielgerade einbog, war in der Umgebung der Real World Studios nahe Bath tatsächlich der Sommer eingekehrt und alles ergrünt. Die echte Welt passte also zur Atmosphäre des Albums – vor Leben sprühend. Und so wird es auch diesen Sommer hoffentlich wieder sein, wenn „Life Is Yours“ erscheint.

Auch in der Wahl ihrer Produzenten zeigte sich die Band experimentierfreudig und arbeitete mit verschiedenen Kreativpartnern an den Tracks, oftmals in wechselnden Kombinationen aus Produzenten, Soundmischern und Studios. Zu den kreativen Stimmen auf dem Album zählen John Hill (Portugal The Man, Florence + The Machine), Dan Carey (Tame Impala, Fontaines D.C.), Miles James und A.K. Paul (zusammen mit seinem Bruder Jai Paul Gründer des Paul Institute). Ein Großteil des Albums wurde anschließend von dem zehnfachen Grammy-Gewinner Manny Marroquin (Post Malone, Kanye West, Rihanna) abgemischt, ein weiterer Grammy-Preisträger in Gestalt von Mark „Spike“ Stent (Coldplay, Muse, Kings of Leon) übernahm das Mixing einiger anderer Tracks.

Foals

Foals
From playing chaotic house parties in their home city of Oxford to becoming major festival headliners across Europe, Foals’ trajectory has been remarkable. They’ve earned critical acclaim (NME and Q Award wins, plus Mercury Prize, Ivor Novello and BRIT Award nominations) and fan devotion (1.7 million sales of their four Gold-certified albums) in equal measure. And while the majority of contemporaries have fallen by the wayside, Foals continue to hit new peaks.

What’s more, they’ve achieved it all on their own terms. “We’ve never been a straight-up pop band, we’ve never tried to make a hit,” observes frontman Yannis Philippakis. “From the beginning, we’ve come at it from an unorthodox angle.”

After more than a decade in the game, Foals again embrace that love for the unconventional with the bravest and most ambitious project of their career: not one, but two astonishing new albums: ‘Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost’. A pair of releases, separate but related. They share a title, themes and artwork. “Two halves of the same locket,” Yannis explains, with the first of the pair emerging in March and the second following later in the year.

“They can be listened to and appreciated individually, but fundamentally, they are companion pieces,” he states. Musically they explore uncharted sonic territories for the group. Fundamentally tethered but possessing their own personalities, the two bodies capture the most compelling, ambitious and cohesive creations they’ve ever produced.

The new albums’ journeys began as the ‘What Went Down’ era ended. Founding bassist Walter Gervers departed on amicable terms after playing the Festival Paredes de Coura in Portugal in August 2017. Foals felt that he couldn’t be replaced – a decision that ushered in a period of recalibration, reorganisation and, ultimately, rejuvenation.

After taking a little time out, Yannis, Jimmy (Smith, guitar), Jack (Bevan, drums) and Edwin (Congreave, keys) had decided to self-produce their new music, sharing duties on bass. They began by writing in a rehearsal space before exporting those sketches into the recording phase at 123 Studios, Peckham, with the assistance of engineer Brett Shaw. They’d repeat the cycle between the two spaces, effectively “creating an ongoing feedback loop” as they sought to “push every new idea to the finish line.”

“There was no time pressure, no deadline and no real worry of expense,” says Yannis. “This was the time for us to put our money where our mouth is and itch what’s needed to be scratched for a while, to make Foals 100% concentrated, no dilution.”

While the concept behind the album breaks new ground, the music also finds Foals leaping into new territory. Eager to break the traditional pop song structure which they felt they were becoming increasingly tapered to, the 20 tracks defy expectation. There are exploratory, progressive-tinged tracks which occasionally break the 10-minute mark alongside atmospheric segues which make the music an experience rather than a mere collection of songs. Yet the band’s renowned ability to wield relentless grooves with striking power and skyscraper hooks also reaches new heights.

Lead track ‘Exits’ is case in point, with Philippakis conjuring the image of a disorienting world “upside down” via a contagious vocal melody. It’s a fresh anthem for Foals’ formidable arsenal, but also an ominous forecast.

“There’s a definite idea about the world being no longer habitable in the way that it was,” says Yannis. “A kind of perilousness lack of predictability and a feeling of being overwhelmed by the magnitudes of the problems we face. What’s the response? And what’s the purpose of any response that one individual can have?”

‘Exits’ signposts what to expect thematically from both instalments of ‘Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost’. The title is a warning that anything – from the tiniest fleeting moment of inspiration through to the planet’s own biological diversity – can be under threat of being irrevocably erased.

It’s a theme that permeates throughout the album’s material, as Foal mirror the public neuroses that have been provoked by our current cultural climate. Paranoia of state surveillance? Fear of environmental collapse? Anxiety over Trump’s next potentially cataclysmic move? It’s all there in these apocalyptic songs.

It’s particularly evident in the euphoric ‘In Degrees’ which imagines a future “where your ability to talk to each other has been reduced to nothing”. It’s a message that can be interpreted on multiple levels. It could be the personal fear of a failing relationship, or a grand scale, Black Mirror-styled vision of a dystopian future.

This approach is perhaps most vividly captured on ‘Syrups’, and the devastating closing pair of songs on the first album, ‘Sunday’ and ‘I’m Done With The World (& It’s Done With Me)’. The latter is “a song basically written for a future child, having this fear that they’re not going to be able to experience nature in the way we did.”

“Lyrically, there are resonances with what’s going on in the world at the moment,” summarises Yannis. “I wrote the lyrics for this record from the viewpoint of sitting and looking out through a big glass window and wanting to observe the world from the sixth floor of a building. Like having this panoptic view of stuff, rather than writing in a closed room – it was important to start to allow a bit more of that in.”

“I just feel like, what’s the utility of being a musician these days, if you can’t engage with at least some of this stuff?” he continues. “These songs are white flags, or they’re SOSs, or they’re cries for help… each in a different way.”

While the world’s ever more unpredictable ways are potentially something to fear, Foals’ constant willingness to reinvent themselves is something to celebrate.

“We’ve shed different skins as a band. We’ve been a band that have played underground house parties, a band that have played Fabric, rock festivals… we’ve lived a lot of lives,” reflects Yannis, sounding invigorated. “At a time when a lot of the music landscape has changed and fallen away… to still feel as creatively potent as we did in the beginning, if not more so, is the biggest thing. It feels good to feel like we’re an important, interesting, alive band.”

In a contemporary climate of few concrete certainties, Amen to one of them.

This album contains no booklet.