Foals Arrived More Like Bucking Broncos

Lee's Palace

Toronto, ON

on May 2 2008

Jessica Lewis (CHARTattack)

05/05/2008 11:00am

British rock quintet Foals' first Canadian set was quite the beautiful, barely comprehensible mess.

The only point where it wasn't so pretty was when Sebastien Grainger & The Mountains opened the late night show. Despite the pedigree that comes with being Death From Above 1979's ex-vocalist and drummer, I wasn't impressed. Grainger and his hardly charismatic Mountains played as if they were in their own separate bubbles, each fixated on something other than the audience or the music. There were too many moments of "playing rock star" as two of the four members hid behind their hair and Grainger adopted the drop-to-the-floor-passionately-with-guitar look.

The crowd wasn't really feeling it and Grainger's set felt interminably drawn out to a Lee's audience tense with pent-up Foals anticipation.

That energy was quickly channeled when Foals' twisting and turning roller-coaster ride of a set began. I genuinely feared for my life when guitarist Jimmy Smith kicked the monitor in front of me halfway over. Frontman Yannis Philippakis initially appeared shy, but seemed to steadily gain courage with each song. He fit most of his microphone comfortably into his mouth and nobody could understand the stories he told. Whenever he finished speaking, though, it was met with intense girlish screaming.

Bassist Walter Gervers, keyboardist Edwin Congreave and drummer Jack Bevan became the stable glue. Together they flowed in a way that seemed natural. They didn't have to glance at one another to know where the other was going.

Foals music is buzzy and the guitars are played on higher frets, making the experience exciting and different. They were also far more raw than on their full-length debut, Antidotes. A small disappointment was that they didn't have a saxophone player, which is key to the album. After commencing with "The French Open," they charismatically punched their way through "Olympic Airways," "Balloons" and "Heavy Water." But it wasn't until "Two Steps, Twice" and "Electric Bloom" that the crowd of indie hipsters began to hop about madly, segueing into an encore that included the anthemic first single, "Cassius."

The Foals packed a solid Toronto venue for their first Canadian date and managed to send the hipsters home happy, even if nobody understood them.