Foals: Total Life Forever (2LP) [SUB POP]

Why you'll love it

This Sub Pop edition spreads the album over two LPs at 45 RPM, with a download card. It reached No. 8 on the UK Albums Chart, and "Spanish Sahara" was the song that showed how far the Oxford band had come.

This edition

• 2LP set
• Cut at 45 RPM
• Download card included

About the album

After a debut full of jittery math-rock angles, Foals went to Gothenburg and came back with something much bigger. They recorded at Svenska Grammofon Studion with producer Luke Smith, road-testing new songs at festivals and at Blur's reunion show in Hyde Park along the way.

"Spanish Sahara" was the first taste, a slow-building, seven-minute swell that Zane Lowe premiered on BBC Radio 1 as his Hottest Record in the World, and it was recorded separately in London. "Blue Blood" opens with chiming guitars, "Miami" grooves on a funky, loose-limbed bass line, "This Orient" is a bright, propulsive single, and "Black Gold" and "After Glow" stretch out into the band's most atmospheric playing yet. Yannis Philippakis's voice moves from fragile to fierce, and the whole record has a warmth and space their first album hinted at. "Blue Blood" and "This Orient" picked up extra recording at The Motor Museum in Liverpool before the whole thing was mastered at Marcussen.

Before it came out, the band described the sound as being like the dream of an eagle dying. It's a vivid image, though not one we've yet managed to fit on a shelf divider.

Also at Kops: more Foals on vinyl · browse Alternative

Tracklist

Listen

On Transgressive / Sub Pop (cat# SP 875), the 2010 album.