Song Stories: Foals: Looking High

Foals have been known to change up their sound throughout their career. Embracing different elements, from their early math rock beginnings on songs like 'Two Steps Twice' and then more cinematic rock masterpieces which really came to fruition on ‘Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost: Part 1’ and 'Part 2'. 

Yet in 2022 the band made a huge leap. 'Life is Yours' saw the band enter almost dance rock terrority. Think Primal Scream, Hot Chip and New Order. It's the sound of your indie night out, with danceble beats, and anthemic choruses. Written in lockdown, this record doesn't mope or moan, instead it hedonistic party record. 

The band told the NME, “This is our idea of a going-out record. We were thinking about parties, club nights and being drunk on the bus at 2am trying to get home. All of it: the excitement before you go out, meeting up with your friends, the wild abandon. ‘Who’s got the pingers? Where are we going?’ This is all of that youthful excess of going out.”

This in my opinion is Foals best album, and 'Looking High' is the best song on the record, a song that perfectly blends Foals old and new. With Math Rock influences but also danceable 80s synths creating a huge expansive and atmospheric sound. It's sound balances introspective ideas with energetic danceable moments. The perfect juxtaposition of those nights out we have all had.

It's lyrics sees the band looking back, to before the pandemic but also to their more hedonistic younger days. The bands frontman Yannis Philippakis explained the songs meaning "it is looking back to a more hedonistic time in my life, and a more innocent time in society in general, pre-pandemic and before the existential threat of climate change”.

“It takes place in an alley in Oxford with two clubs – The Cellar and The Wheatsheaf – that all the city’s nightlife gravitated towards,” the singer added.
“It was before clubs started to close down and our cities started to change into more corporate, arid places. There’s an element of being haunted by nightlife that’s no longer there.”

This youthful excess and the idea of nightclub and bar culture is felt throughout the record. Lyrically the song isn't just the story of the bands nights out, we can all relate to it on a basic level. Universally relatable, and definitley anthemic. Foals made a song, and a whole album that no one expected them to make. It 

An album perfect for a muddy festival field in Reading but also an Ibiza nightclub, or even a beach in Brighton. This record is one of my favourites in recent memory. A love letter to long summer days and youthful excess, an indie party record. 

It opened Foals up to a whole new audience, and propelled them to the top of festival stages again. This isn't an anomoly in the bands discography though, they had embraced more electronic elements before. With songs like 'My Number' and 'In Degrees', on this song and album they just explored that avenue a lot more.

Thank you for reading 

Jack