Some feelings I felt while watching Foals live

All photos by Mikki Gomez via Secret Sounds Touring

Foals are currently in the country for Falls and a series of sideshows on the east coast, we sent along our Sydney man to see if they matched up to their latest record. Word back is they do.

FOALS ARE DEFINITELY AT THE GATES OF WORLD DOMINATION

With a near sell-out event packing in 5000 people at the Hordern Pavillion and headline slots at Falls, Foals have Australia in the palm of their hand. And while they won't be writing anything like Taylor Swift's Shake It Off to skyrocket them into world stardom they will be sitting atop of festival bills from now on. A position well-deserved after putting out albums like Total Life Forever, Holy Fire and now What Went Down. If anything it begs the question, what took so long for everyone to realise Foals always had it?

WHEN WHAT WENT DOWN, WELL, WENT DOWN IT WAS MENTAL

Foals held out playing What Went Down for a long time, instead playing sonic cousins of it like Snake Oil, Providence before closing the main set with Inhaler. But nothing can prepare you for the bone crunching, arms flailing intensity of What Went Down when close to 5000 people shout, "When I see a man I see a liar," at the top of their voices. While moshing. And going mental. What Went Down is a key song within Foals's discography, hinting at what future Foals's albums could sound like; a mixture of their build and drop structure and the rough-cut, wild sound made in the What Went Down album.

FOALS HAVE THE BACK CATALOGUE TO PLAY HIT AFTER HIT AND STILL MAKE THE CROWD GO WILD FOR NEARLY TWO HOURS

If you'd asked whether playing one of their most popular songs My Number right at the beginning of their set was a wise move I'd be unsure. However the sheer number of songs they played afterwards proved Foals are at a point in their career where no one album needs to take the focus for night as they can pick and mix. Which gives audience the best of both worlds; an array of the best songs from all their albums creating maximum intensity for the length of Foals set. 

LEAD SINGER YANNIS PHILIPPAKIS LOVES CROWD SURFING

Yannis is a real front man, he doesn't whip the crowd into a frenzy by shouting at them, he gets right in the middle of it. For the most part he does that by jumping off something into the crowd. And while there wasn't anything to leap off at the Hordern, unless you count the roof 30 metres up, Yannis instead crowdsurfed. Not once but twice in the encore. Now sure that isn't every band's kind of thing but when your thing is massive riffs, wild breakdowns and a lot of shouting, it makes sense to jump into the crowd. 

FOALS ARE NOT FANS OF DONALD TRUMP

On a musically unrelated but still equally important note Foals have bumped themselves up in their estimation as an all round great band by sticking it to Donald Trump in the middle of their set. The relevance? None. The Satisfaction? High. No one needs more Trump in their life and to see the merchandise table also spruking Greenpeace's Sea Sheperd apparel provided a brief respite from the otherwise bland merchandise Foals had on sale.

Obviously over in the west we won't be seeing Foals live this weekend on account of Southbound being cancelled, if you'd like to help out with fire relief in anyway head to the Red Cross Disaster Relief Assitance PAGE.