Foals Maththacre at the Bowery
Vanita Salisbury
April 28, 2008
There’s been crazy hype surrounding Oxford math rockers Foals and their new album Antidotes, which is unusual for an electro-pop band given the current ubiquity of the genre. But last Thursday at Bowery Ballroom, the good words were justified given the frenetic performance of scrappy but deadpan frontman Yannis Philippakis. He clutched his guitar close, elbow crooked, and manically pigeon-bobbed his neck to the beat. He banged the hell out of his drum during “Electric Bloom,” then hopped off stage and plowed through the dancing crowd like an Energizer bunny with drumsticks in hand, his wisp of art-school bangs flopping in his face.
During the punk-funk “French Open,” Philippakis sarcastically joined his bandmates in repeating the slogan from a French Lacoste tennis advertisement: “Wasted games! Rackets! Gadgets!” Hopefully the crowd was in on the joke. The bandleader situated his microphone to his left, facing his guitarist and leaving the audience to take the band in as a whole. (None of the six members actually faced the crowd, unless you count the drummer, who obviously had to.) The group played for themselves as much as the paying customers, feeding off each other’s energy and generating sonic bouillabaisse. The “aviator mustached” saxophonist shut his eyes and writhed to the tribal beat. The drummer stood on his stool during “Two Steps Twice” and encouraged the crowd to clap. Everybody was in on the performance.
Ultimately the show was custom-designed to be great, with the formula of each song orchestrated to bring about the highest peak of frenzy. First, start with a drone. Then throw in some sax, then keep building, borrowing from !!! and Rapture along the way. Throw in a high-energy frontman, and you’re ready to sell out Bowery, and later this summer, Union Hall. The night ended with their popular hit “Mathletics,” with high-pitched guitars mimicking insects, pumping up the crowd to maximum foot-shuffling potential and prompting the British dude in the back to exclaim—when he had caught his breath—“That was fucking proper.”
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