They shot the cheerfully choreographed video for 2am in January, after which they watched ice skating, visited bars, hung out with the crew and talked about politics. A perfect day ended with hugs and group photos. “The optimism that day was captured in the video,” the singer says sadly. “It’s strange to think how quickly it has become brutal.” Due to the Russian invasion – after which the Foals canceled the upcoming shows in Moscow and St. Petersburg – the band found it difficult to communicate with the Ukrainians with whom they spent time. “There are people in our video who now have to find shelter for their lives or raise rifles to defend their city,” says Filippakis. “The choreographer left a message saying that she and her husband had to hide from the bombings.” I meet the Foals in March in their small rented studio, rehearsal room and writing room in Peckham, London, with coffee. “It’s definitely weird to do a promo,” admits guitarist Jimmy Smith, with his recently dyed blond hair reflecting his current status as an Englishman living in Los Angeles. Nor is it lost that the album we’re here to talk about – the seventh and best of their careers – is a party euphoria record, worthy of a band whose latest album reached No. 1 and is high on Glastonbury of the summer and Latitude lineup, warming up with four sold-out nights at the Olympia in London this weekend. Life Is Yours – packed with sunny, motorcycle disco / dance influences like Wake Me Up and the wonderful upcoming 2001 single – compares to the Talking Heads, LCD Soundsystem and Duran Duran of the ’80s. With more keys and fewer guitars, his ecstatic atmosphere could not be further from the horrors of Ukraine, the pandemic, climate change or the economic crisis. Foals live at Usher Hall, Edinburgh, April 2022. Photo: Roberto Ricciuti / Redferns Filippakis explains that when they made the 2019 albums with socially conscious albums, Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost (Parts 1 and 2), “the climate crisis suddenly appeared on us and books about the sixth mass disappearance were released. “I felt right to deal with the threat on the horizon.” However, while Life Is Yours is also a response to the post-Covid world, which has what it describes as “everyday danger or darkness now that is impossible to ignore”, this time the mood is high. “It was written in the middle of a lockdown,” explains the quietly speaking singer, wearing a DH Lawrence beard and wearing the same loose-fitting shirt she wears on stage. “Winter, gray, no life on the streets. So we came here and protected ourselves from all this by writing music that felt escape and happy, but also hopeful for the future that will return “. When the pandemic broke out, the Foals managed to set a date for an Asian tour in February 2020 before the concerts suddenly began to be canceled. “We did not know what the hell was going on,” says Filippakis. “You think, ‘Oh, that’s going to happen soon,’ but it didn’t.” After I returned to the UK, it was nice to spend some unexpected time at home – the band had prevented them from seeing collaborators – but the singer remembers the “surreal weird” of the first lockdown. “We all grew up in apocalyptic movies like Contagion, World War Z or whatever. So there was this aspect of dealing with something that we were all worried about. “ The core of being a musician is not sitting in a studio. It is the show and the connection with the people Giannis Filippakis Jack Bevan, the band’s sleek, polite, gentle drummer, was one of the first in the UK with Covid. Returning from Asia, he suffered “basically the worst flu I have ever had. After about 10 days I started to feel a little better, but then I had pneumonia symptoms for a week and after this kind of excessive fatigue for about a month. That was long before the lockdown, when Covid was a mystery to the people here. I was just watching the news, with all these scary statistics and cases from abroad. So there was no assurance as to how this thing would go. “ Smith, meanwhile, fled to Los Angeles to see his girlfriend, got stuck there during the lockdown (hence his now full-time residence in the US) and was also attacked by Covid. “It was in my lungs for a month,” he says. “It must have been shocking enough to make me quit smoking.” When the band finally reorganized in Peckham, playing for hours every day became a way of blocking what was going on outside. The Foals made Life Is Yours as a trio. In 2018, bassist co-founder Walter Gervers, the band’s most stable “paternal figure” and adviser in times of controversy, suddenly left to start a family. The departure of another founder, keyboard player Edwin Congreave, last year was less unexpected but just as important. He had graduated from Open University with a view to studying at Cambridge and, as Filippakis explains, found it difficult to reconcile the drink and adrenaline of a touring lifestyle with academia. Foals in 2010. Edwin Congreave (far right) and Walter Gervers (bottom left) have left the band. Photo: Andy Willher / Redferns “Poor Edwin,” Smith says, laughing. “We would get on the bus at 3 in the morning and he would be in the back living room with his papers, trying to study for exams at 9 in the morning.” The other members insist that the departures have strengthened their ties, but such changes in the lineup can destroy the dynamics of a group, especially losing people with whom they played for 15 years. “It can be destabilizing,” admits Filippakis as we are in a second round of coffee. “And you miss them as a social presence. “Spending your life with your friends is a beautiful way to spend your time, so when someone leaves you think: we will never spend so much time with this person again.” This explains in part why Life Is Yours occasionally has a sadder underground current. Every Foals album is different – either the “career bet” of the ambitious Total Life Forever of 2010 or the heavier ground of What Went Down of 2015. In a way, Life Is Yours is reminiscent of the dizzying energy of their Antidotes debut 2008, but they saw it through a mirror. “We thought about when we started,” thinks Filippakis, now 35, referring to their days (after the initial meeting in Oxford) as a math rock band that lived in a Peckham squat called Squallyoaks, sharing food and playing “wildly.” party “on the squat stage. “There was optimism that no longer exists. It was a golden age of nightlife: great clubs, house music, pre-social media and smartphones, all the intersections in music, art, dance. I think about songs like [Life Is Yours track] Looking up there is an anxiety, now that the clubs are closing. “When we made the album, we gagged to live life, so you find yourself thinking of old parties and moments where you could lose yourself in an instant.” You would see Giannis hanging from a balcony with security holding him by the belt of his belt and thinking: “What is he doing now?” Jack Beevan? The Foals are emerging again in a very different climate from the one they started in 2004, one of the NME singles, a CD and a thriving circuit of live bands and smaller venues. “There are a lot of positives about social media and the internet,” says Filippakis, playing a Spanish guitar silently. and studios. It affects the way people make music together or the idea of making friends and making music together. Everything has migrated to the internet, but if you walk in our cities, there is no record store, nowhere to make a racket. They are all a bit useless. When I was still in school I went [club night] “Garbage in London every week and the Horrors or Arctic Monkeys or the Klaxons would be there, and I felt like everyone was part of something.” The idea of music as a community experience is central to the Foals and, ironically, partly because Congreave left. Having started touring with an old Royal Mail van, the avid environmentalist felt uncomfortable with the band’s carbon footprint. The Foals are offset by their carbon footprint, but Smith argues that if a band wants to sustain a life and an income – even one that unfurled a banner reading No Music on a Dead Planet at the 2019 Mercury Award – it is impossible to avoid some environmental effects. “It’s not just income, though,” says Filippakis. “For me, the core of being a musician is not sitting in a studio. It is the performance and the connection with the people “. He remembers a specific conversation with Congreave on the tour bus before their canceled tour in Asia. “He said, ‘We should not do these shows’ – not because of Covid, but because of the impact of a band that flies thousands of miles. “We had a very honest and logical discussion, but in the end we said, ‘We want to be musicians.’
