Louder, straighter, more pummelling, more forceful - that's the direction British rockers Foals have taken on their fourth album. And perhaps that's the logical progression, given the slowly building intensity and increasing crowd sizes the band have gathered in recent years.
The only problem is the attempt to increase their epicness has led to a decrease in the intricacy and emotional potency that made them stand out from the crowd on recent albums. It's not that What Went Down is a bad album - it's just that Foals seem a little too preoccupied with their quest for stadium anthems, and not concerned enough with the building blocks of strong song ideas.
The first three tracks are promising, exciting even. In the opening title track, the straight, rhythmic approach is almost hypnotic, and builds in dynamism to a fairly explosive finale, Mountain At My Gates has a nice RnB groove, and some of the signature layers of interweaving riffs we're accustomed to, and Birch Tree has a great relaxed, dance-along feel, and a funky 80s atmosphere. But then the momentum gets a little lost.
Tracks like Albatross feel a tad obvious and laboured, like a Coldplay offcut, Give It All seems indulgent, its collage of ideas coming across as distinctly unmemorable. Snake Oil feels like a song lacking in ideas, filled with volume and thickness and big, blunt riffery instead, and essentially the imaginative spark seems to gave faded. Fortunately they find it again for closing track A Knife In The Ocean, an intriguing cinematic rock ballad about fading youth and disenchantment.
"I buried my heart in a hole in the ground," sings frontman Yannis Philippakis in opener What Went Down, and that feels like what he's done with this album - aside from the first three, there's something a little cold about many of these tracks, something lacking in adventure and connection. The elements of great songs are often in place, but the heart and soul is missing.
