Foals On Why Diving Into The Moshpit Beats Reading Tweets

“I’m not exhausted. Really! It hasn’t been that full-on yet,” Foals frontman Yannis Philippakis tells me from Spain, just hours before the British rockers took the stage at O Son do Camino festival. “We’ve done some big shows this year, but it’s not been draining. In fact, it’s probably the freshest we’ve felt in a really long time.”

Foals have been touring on and off since April, performing music ahead of the release of their seventh studio album Life Is Yours, which dropped on Friday. For many bands, such a hectic schedule after two years of very limited live appearances might be taxing… but performing live is an integral part of the Foals DNA that, despite several back-to-back shows, it’s not hard to believe Philippakis when he says things are just warming up. “I think that we're also coming at it with a slightly renewed appreciation for how special it is to get to travel and to play music, as the purpose of the travel as well,” he reflects.

So important is being able to perform songs soon after releasing them, that unlike a great number of their contemporaries, Foals didn’t release a record in 2020 or 2021. “I was watching some bands release music in the pandemic,” Philippakis says. “It’s not a good experience. For us, putting music out… It needs to be part of the ecosystem where there are shows and we are meeting people and connecting with them. Otherwise it’s all just mediated through technology… I’m just from a generation where that just doesn’t light my spirit up and I just can’t get the same buzz from reading a tweet… I couldn’t be happier to play shows again, it’s necessary.”

Philippakis is known for getting up in the faces of the crowd, as well as more daredevil-style acts. This reporter has witnessed him climb a speaker stack at the Enmore (in 2011), surf/wade through the crowd while still playing his guitar at Oxford Art (2013) and dive head first into the crowd at the main stage at Splendour In The Grass (2014). But the bearded frontman reveals he’s been more reserved than usual since the pandemic. “Things are pretty much back to normal, in terms of the crowd vibe and mosh pits. I have been getting out there in the crowd a bit, but I get the feeling that some people are a bit more timid now about being confronted by me yelling in their face, so that’s something I’m slightly conscious of.”

Despite that, crowds have absolutely embraced the new music, and Philippakis admits he was surprised with how quickly pre-album singles were being sung back to the band by the crowd at gigs. “It’s been sick, we’ve been opening the shows with ‘Wake Me Up’ and that’s been cool - people will sing along. But it’s been awesome, the new music adds a different dimension and really elevates things throughout. It makes the set feel like more of a party than maybe it was on the last record.”

Calling Life Is Yours a ‘bit more of a party’ than Foals’ last record is an understatement. In 2019 the band released a two-part opus titled Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost. It was an epic piece of art, a real journey and exploration through sonic soundscapes. This new album is not only more upbeat but is missing those seven, eight or nine-minute songs that Foals had become known for.

In fact, the longest track ‘Wild Green’ clocks in at just over five minutes. This was by design to some extent, Philippakis says. “We wanted the record to have energy all the way through. We didn’t want to have eight songs that were for the club and two that were super melancholic. We’ve done that pattern before.”

He also reveals that part of the reason for shorter, punchier tunes is because drummer Jack Bevan was more heavily involved in the writing process right from the start. “The drums were definitely more of a focal point on this record, and that was a product of the way we wrote. If you have a song in a live band environment, Jack’s going to drum on it, because drummers like to drum and fucking love to drum,” he chuckles.

But despite there being some less familiar aspects to Life Is Yours, it still carries that quintessential ‘Foals’ sound. That’s despite it being the first to be released by the band since they became a three-piece. Philippakis admits that he doesn’t even quite know why the way he plays the guitar has been so linked with how people describe the sound of the band. “It’s just the way I play guitar, but there have been many songs down the years that don’t have those typical guitar hooks. If the song feels like it needs that type of hook, I'll put that on there.”

The singer and guitarist says this record also saw him playing the bass more than ever before, but playing multiple instruments was made easier by using the most producers ever on a Foals album. It was a product of only having three band members now, Philippakis explains. “The way we made this record, we used four producers, and we worked in lots of different studios. If we had five of us in the band, and then plus four producers, that's a recipe for nonsense right there.

“Whereas with three, you can have the producers come in, and you can leave them a lot more space to do their work without it turning into a kind of tug of war. So I think definitely, that's an important bit - that we wouldn't have made this record as a five-piece.”