FOALS at Newport Music Hall

FOALS Newport Music Hall - Columbus, OH Wednesday, July 27, 2016; Doors open at 7:00 PM $23.50 Advance / $25.00 Day of Show General Admission - All Ages On an unseasonably warm night in March, 2013, within the august, hallowed walls of the Royal Albert Hall in London, something extraordinary happened. Five musicians took to the stage, launched into a song called Inhaler, and blew the roof off. For the 5,000-plus people who were lucky enough to be present that evening, the experience was more like a mass epiphany at a revivalist meeting than a gig. Foals whipped up a frenzy and sent it hurtling towards the audience, who gave it a shake and sent it hurtling right back. Two hours later, we staggered, reeling, out into the night. This was more than music. This was alchemy. But then, inevitably, came the fear. Could the band ever match this? It cannot be the case that one type of music can be more resonant, more significant, than another. Music, from whatever genre, either connects or it doesn’t; not because it’s chart-pop, or alt-country, or deep house, or art-rock, but because it speaks to us, baffles us, ensnares us. Sometimes, though, a band will ride roughshod over that logic, will create something that takes music beyond the usual narrow considerations of chart placings and boy-meets-girl platitudes, and renders all around it irrelevant, trivial, disposable. All of the truly transformative and era-defining albums have grappled with questions that are a world away from the bland bleating’s of homogenized pop. Permanence and impermanence, life and death, solitude, vulnerability, intimacy, passion, rage, humanity – weighty issues that make demands of the people creating that music, and of all those who listen to it, too. What Went Down confronts these issues head-on. Recorded with James Ford in the same Provence village where, 127 years ago, the artist Van Gogh was hospitalized in a psychiatric ward after slicing off his ear, the album sees the band take their songwriting to a new level. My notes on What Went Down, taken when I first heard the album, look like automatic writing, a scribbled blur that makes me feel breathless if I read it back. On every page, the same words are repeated, always in capitals: SONG! LIVE!!! I am impatient to the point of petulance to see the band play new songs such as “Night Swimmers” (“Calypso!” “Tom Tom Club” “SONG!”), “London Thunder” (“Hymn-like, elemental” “WHAT a melody!” “Amazing liftoff into middle 8” “LIVE!!”), “Give It All” (“Woodpecker staccato guitar” “Vast return of drums”) and “Birch Tree” (“Total bliss-out, borne aloft” “Summer soul, West Coast with the roof down” “Middle 8 massed vocals, handclaps”) live. To feel the brute force of the title track (“F*cking HELL. Sonic carnage”) slap me in the face. To watch one of the best bands in the bloody world whip up a frenzy and send it hurtling towards me. At which point, I’ll give it a shake, and send it hurtling right back. For What Went Down is more than music. What Went Down is alchemy. Official Website: www.foals.co.uk Tickets on sale at all Ticketmaster locations. Charge by phone at 800-745-3000 or online at www.ticketmaster.com. For more information, visit www.promowestlive.com.