The brilliant trick of the second album of the British band except is that them and make everything right at the same time everything is different. Because of the fast, complex sound of "Antidotes" threatened already to repeat on the debut album already, takes "Total Life Forever" consistently print out and turns to the great emotional gesture. The break is not as hard as between the first and second album by The Cure, from cheerful guitar pop to introspective melancholy, but as Yannis Philippakis singing strangely reminiscent of a less querulous Robert Smith here as an almost exponential growth spurt is tangible here too, an almost abrupt disappearance of naivety. At the same time, unlike in The Cure, the Foals do not lose their innocence, on the contrary, TLF sounds harmonious, soft, less military than its predecessor, has so far also significantly more mainstream appeal (although the extractions from the debut in the UK charts successful were). Where "Antidotes" but had a consistently strong album, without a single sagging, there are from TLF definitely tracks that Mittenmang develop some fatigue, do not want to come out of the Quark correctly, not the band plays without reason live with significantly more energy. One notices in some songs that you have in the studio too much in what is technically feasible, the sound per se, in the Hall soup, lost and verwabert and really needed a Energydring infusion. Other songs, "Spanish Sahara" and "This Orient" certainly by far ahead, have an emotional appeal, a structure, an energy that manages without great pace and have to cry beautiful moment, because the band almost mühlelos dynamic changes, crescendos , the breathing up and down a song dominated, while also harmonic changes and tight compositional Layer delivers that you need air. While, the rather straight recordings like "Black Gold" and "Miami" just rather that linear pieces are not the strength of the band, the normal pop composition works, but does not give the experimentation of Britons enough space. So some songs seem unnecessary and commercially well-behaved and under this surface impression is almost lost, how grand the guitar work of Jimmy Smith is as perfect bass and drums work as immaculate and never boring, the band from Oxford works. "Total Life Forever" sounds sultry, warmer than Antidotes, shimmering in the heat and at the same time a little sluggish, relaxed, like an afternoon at the beach. It is certainly no coincidence that allusions like Miami or Spain or Orient emerge 'the plate acts international, larger, more experienced than the debut, it sounds in relation to "Antidotes" like The Police's "Zenyatta Mondatta" to "Regatta de Blanc"' tidier, mellowed, certainly also commercial, somehow on the threshold of something different and new. Since one can only hope that the Foals do not stick to this Hammock soundtrack of their second album, so beautiful it is, but inspire us with the third album with a new, converted again and again grown Sound.
