Gig Review: Foals at Barclaycard Arena, 19/02/2016

After years of chipping away at the music world, Foals have embarked on their first ever arena tour this month, with quite the lineup of support – Everything Everything and a DJ set from Birmingham’s Peace. Here’s what I thought of their first foray into the world of arenas.

Before it all kicked off, a spotlight came down on the left hand side of the stage, illuminating two members of Peace, who preceded to kick out some big funk classics in their DJ set – there’s not a lot I can say about this part of the concert other than it was fun and something to keep the crowd going before the live music!

When Everything Everything appeared, however, it was clear this was going to be a night of high calibre music. Sounding just as polished live as they ever have, the band performed a selection of songs, mostly from their 2015 album ‘Get To Heaven’, with a couple from their sophomore release ‘Arc’. While it was a shame that their early material wasn’t delved into, they put on an incredible show, with particular highlights being ‘Blast Doors’ and the crowd-hypnotising ‘No Reptiles’. Everything Everything continue to be one of the best live acts the UK has to offer and they did a fantastic job of getting the crowd warmed up, especially during their finale ‘Distant Past’. (Read my review of Everything Everything’s 2015 tour here)

We then had the tantalising wait for Foals – the crowd was abuzz and when the lights went down the anticipation was almost too much. From the opener ‘Snake Oil’, Foals had the audience completely enraptured. There was dancing, there was moshing, it was crowd-capturing like very little I’d ever seen before – and the hits just kept on coming.

There’s no doubt that Foals are a heavier band live than they are in the studio. Even tracks like ‘My Number’ become big arena stompers when transferred to a live setting – but this wasn’t a performance without dynamics. Delving into their second album ‘Total Life Forever’, we were treated to ‘Blue Blood’ and ‘Spanish Sahara’ and the bands’ ability to entrance an audience was fully realised during these more subdued moments.

The astounding ‘Providence’ and the truly explosive ‘A Knife In The Ocean’ were definite highlights of the set, with the latter of the two almost descending into post-rock levels of speaker-crunching guitars – incredible. The main set was rounded out with ‘Inhaler’ and while it perhaps didn’t quite have that same explosive quality as some of the other tracks of the night, the grooves were there and the band were incredibly tight throughout. The general musicianship over the whole night is something to be lauded, in fact – not a beat was missed.

Another thing that must be mentioned is the light show. Perhaps taking influence from Radiohead’s ‘The King of Limbs’ tour, the band had a set of screens suspended above the stage that moved into different positions through the set, along with a spectacular laser show that just kept on surprising with its levels of creativity. If there was any fear that Foals couldn’t make an arena tour a visual experience as well as an aural one, that fear was certainly dispelled.

Foals returned to the stage for what has to be one of the strongest encores I’ve seen, and if there is a better three song set to describe what Foals are all about, I’d like to see it. The quiet, brooding tones of ‘London Thunder’, the huge, angry, crowd-ensnaring vocals of ‘What Went Down’ and the early math-rock influences of ‘Two Steps, Twice’. A spectacular finale to a truly impressive concert.

Overall, Foals’ arena tour was something to behold. From their excellent choice of support act to the incredibly tight performance that they put on themselves, the only thing I’m left wondering is ‘How can they top this?’.

8.5/10