Foals – ‘Spanish Sahara’
A little absence can be a powerful thing.
If you imagine the Top 40 to be a constant party where everyone’s having a great time all the time, apart from the occasional sobbing diva on the stairs and angry shouting men fighting in the street outside, this song doesn’t really fit in. Unless your idea of a good night out involves a moment where the four horsemen of the apocalypse burst through the wall in immaculate 3-D slow-motion, and bring everything to a crashing halt. Where there was hubbub, there is nothing but icy quiet. Not the mere absence of noise, the kind of bruised calm you get when the air is electrified, and something awful is just about to happen, the kind of quiet you get just before a lightning strike.
And then, in a quiet voice that seems to come from everywhere at once, Pestilence wetly informs all the club bunnies and disco dudes that their time on Earth, fleeting as it was, has now come to an abrupt halt.
It is less of a song, in this context, and more of a full stop.
(Here’s the video. It is beautiful.)
A long full stop, mind you, featuring more than four minutes of very slow build-up from nothing. Four minutes! A lifetime in popular music terms, and one which is largely spent with Yannis softly squeaking and howling into reverberating space, like the most heartbroken hamster you could possibly imagine, at the bottom of a very deep well. It’s not unlike the atmosphere of that Wild Beasts song ‘Hooting and Howling’, only without the air of slinkiness, and with added ghosts.
Four minutes though! That’s longer than almost every record in the Top 40, and it’s just to get to the rowdy bit, which is the bit most of the other songs want to stick in your face as soon as the record begins, if not sooner.
And what HAPPENS when we get to the rowdy bit? All that wailing has tired poor little Yannis out, so he has a little sit-down and a cup of squash and a biscuit, leaving room for a delay solo. That’s not a solo which is late, it’s a noise which has been caught and looped in some kind of delay pedal, and left repeating. So, at the exact moment the band most want to grab your lapels and scream “look at me!” into your face, they’re also not really there.
It is, therefore, the exact empirical opposite of that JLS song about the sound of music. ‘The Club Is About To Die’, anyone?
Download: Out now
www.foals.co.uk
BBC Music page
(Fraser McAlpine)
Fense Post says: “‘Spanish Sahara’ begins so softly, virtually all traces of the elements that kept ‘Antidotes’ consistent and connected have vanished.”
One-Thirty BPM says: “This is devoid of silliness. Foals’ version of the Sahara is intriguing and decidedly wintry.”
Popped Music says: “It is the most exciting piece of music I have heard all year.”
View full post on BBC – Chart blog
