FOALS talk 'Total Life Forever' and their third/next album...
Written by Sarah Mudgway   
Sunday, 27 February 2011 23:23
Foals

Oxford-based band (and favourites of ours) FOALS, made their way to New Zealand for their first ever performance on our shores to headline the second annual St. Jerome’s Laneway Festival in late January. While this was the first visit to our shores for Foals, for bassist/back-up-vocalist WALTER GERVERS, a visit to our country was a chance for him to finally see the country with a close link to his family: "my sister was actually born [in New Zealand] and I’ve never been able to visit so it’s exciting to finally be here."

The Kiwi ties to the band who lead in the number of nominations for this year's NME Awards - including nods for Best British Band, Best Live Band, and Best Album - don’t just stop there. On their next U.S. tour, Foals are taking out our very own The Naked And Famous [TNAF] as support alongside Freelance Whales. When asked what they already know about TNAF, guitarist JIMMY SMITH explained that "the only stuff we’ve heard is from their Myspace and they seem real cool... but until you’ve actually met them and hung out, it’s only then that you kind of have some common ground. It will be really fun when we actually get to meet them!"

Foals
ABOVE: Walter Gervers and Jimmy Smith draw portraits of each other.

COUP DE MAIN: Foals tour a lot!! Do the dynamics of your friendship change when you’re out with each other 24/7 on the road?
FOALS - JIMMY SMITH:
I think it probably used to when we were beginning to tour. It’s difficult when you spend all your time forever with the same five people, but now we are used to it and it’s just like touring with your family. There are bits about everyone that annoys you and you get a short fuse every now and then and blow your lid, but it is fine. It’s nice.
CDM: I guess you just get used to it...
JIMMY:
Yeah. We could say the worst things to one another and you’d be forgiven in like a day. Sometimes two days.
CDM: And you guys also live together when you record right?
JIMMY:
<laughs> Yeah we do. We’ve always lived together and God knows why we do that. Every time I get asked a question about that I’m like: "WHY do we actually live together?" So yeah, not only do we live together on the road, but also off the road [too]. But it’s nice.

CDM: Foals are writing/recording the next album in Australia - correct?
JIMMY:
Well, we’ve been in Sydney for the last three weeks demo-ing basically. We just stopped for Christmas, so then we were like ‘well let’s go somewhere hot’ - and we know someone over there who has a good studio so we were like ‘let’s just go there and kind of brainstorm...' and we did that... and it sounded okay.

CDM: Is it in the same style as ‘Total Life Forever'?
JIMMY:
No, not really. I don’t know really know what it’s going to be. Things are in its infancy - we’ve just been working on our songs that aren’t even finished.
FOALS - WALTER GERVERS: It is all very early stages... it basically is a chance for us to come out early and spend some time in Australia. It’s nice because we got to get over our jet-lag and get some sun in the depths of our Winter and kind of be productive again and go back into the studio. But it is just like, kind of really rough demos. But it’s nice, because we have a tendency as a band to lose ideas and forget things so it is nice to put things down, and then get some space from them and then go back.

Foals

CDM: On the Foals website, band members post quite comprehensive blogs... is that something you enjoy doing?
WALTER:
Yeah, we do.
JIMMY: It’s something we’re told we have to do <laughs>.
WALTER: Sometimes we get a bit lapse at doing it [but] really, we always wanted to keep a strong presence as a band and actually communicate [with our fans.] Yannis [Philippakis, vocalist] for example, when we just had our Myspace and before we had a website, he would actually try keep in touch with people and reply to messages and kind of use it as a hub. We get a bit lapse these days but hopefully we’ll get some good photos and stories from this tour. Judging by the bands we’re surrounded by I’m sure there will be some incidents.

CDM: The UK has a grand tradition of releasing singles and albums on vinyl, something that is rather a rarity in New Zealand. Being from the UK, do you think that with the changing of the music industry that this tradition will remain as important in the future?
JIMMY:
Yeah, I think vinyl will always be there because it is like a collector’s thing and I think it sounds best - better than anything else and it looks cool. Vinyl always looks cooler. I think with everything now it is all MP3's. The CD is dead so basically it’s either vinyl or MP3’s, so if you want the physical copy you’d just go get the vinyl.

Foals

CDM: 'Total Life Forever' was named after a theory of singularity, but aside from that, what does the album mean to you as a band and/or personally?
JIMMY:
That’s a good question...
WALTER: ...and a difficult question. I suppose the reason why that might be quite hard to answer is it is not really a sort of selfish situation. So I think a lot of the time when we’re working together as a band, we’re not really thinking about our personal goals. We just tend to work as a unit and don’t really spin off into our own worlds; we tend to just make the most of the five people as it were. Having said that, personally I’m really proud of it. It’s a real achievement as a record and I think it is something that has longevity, and we’ve seen already - which is a pleasure for us - that it has connected with people quite heavily and that’s the best you could hope for when you make music, for that to happen. So I think I’ve got a certain amount of pride about it and it is one of those records that when it was finished I couldn’t wait to play it to my friends and family.
JIMMY: It’s nice you know, there is all this bullshit about the difficult second album and this like cluster of rubbish left all around you, and it was nice to come up with something that we’re dead proud of and like - well, I think we all love the record to bits.
CDM: And obviously it had a good reception too...
JIMMY:
Yeah, so that’s even better! It didn’t bomb. It wasn't panned. <laughs>

CDM: Was there a different creative process to that record compared to your first album ‘Antidotes’?
JIMMY:
Absolutely. The first one was kind of written over a few years, a lot of the songs on that record are like the first songs we ever wrote which we used to just play. And the ones that we did for the record were recorded in a small practice room with really kind of like brutal routines of a nine-to-five job - basically just getting up and going to the studio and writing. Whereas ‘Total Life Forever’ was written in more relaxed surroundings in a basement of our house, so we could just do whatever the hell we wanted and afforded ourselves the time to mess around with stuff, and sounds kind of came out of that.

Click HERE to read our review of FOALS’ headlining set at Auckland’s Laneway Festival date. Foals' 'Total Life Forever' album featuring the singles 'Spanish Sahara', 'This Orient', 'Miami' and 'Blue Blood', is out now.