Another thing I realized...

Foals.

I've been listening to a lot of new albums these past weeks, and some of them have been really thrilling. However, I've realized one peculiar thing - it came to me when I listened to I Got You On Tape's Spinning For The Cause a morning last week. I realized, that I compared it, as I had compared Caribou's Swim and even Agnes Obel's Philharmonics the days before, to an album pretty distant from them all in style, and that album was Total Life Forever. I realized, that Total Life Forever has entered the very exclusive circles of albums, which I almost automatically compare new tunes to. It has become a benchmark, a signature work of art, in the league of For Emma, Forever Ago, Silent Shout, A Weekend In The City and quite a few others. I then instantaneously understood, that I had done Foals a gross injustice by snubbing them of the title of 2010's most interesting album in favor of The Suburbs (which I haven't heard from end to another since December 31st, although I must admit it's long overdue to be spun through my new speakers...)


That's why I now confess: Total Life Forever should have been at #1. And I'm gonna try to serve up the injustice by doing a brief track-by-track walkthrough of this extremely intriguing album.


In its essence, Total Life Forever is nearly everything I ask for in an album, at least musically. It's so intense and warm, it heaves, it pulsates and breathes just like a sleeping animal, the blood in your veins or the girl in your arms. Exactly the latter is maybe the most fitting description, as I've found Total Life Forever to have a build-up and storyline very reminiscent of a night of candlelight, soft caresses and intense coitus.


Take 'Blue Blood'; the precarious, gentle opening guitar glitches enacting the careful mere lip-touching of foreplay, giving way to the most rivetingly catchy bass-line this side of fusion jazz. This track has grown on me massively since I first heard its mindful, tiptoeing swagger.


'Miami', at first glance a superficial piece of painstakingly minutely produced pop, is exactly what Total Life Forever needs to free itself from the quasi-nervous harness that envelops its first few minutes. Drummer Jack Bevan, as so often before and after, really shines through on this one, playing meritoriously insistent.


On the title track, 'Total Life Forever', Foals reach exactly the emotional climax that one associates with such a title, even if everything mightn't be as it seems. Everything goes according to plan, and the curious thing about this entire album is that, in the story it describes, everything does go according to plan. Even if it twists and turns and wanders musically, there's always this scent of blissful happiness and rejoicing.


'Black Gold' is a slow, meandering tune - the last on the album to really come through for me, it did so only last week (every reviewer's repeating of this album being a grower turned out to be well and wholly true; I bought it in June). In the storyline of the candlelight lovers' night, things are almost getting down to the nitty-gritty now. We're heedfully undressing each other, a process often as slow and as laggard as 'Black Gold' on the first thirty listens, but also as passionate and enticing as it seems now.


'Spanish Sahara' is coitus in its initial stages. The slow, tender and sensitive embrace, the instinctively harmonious appropriateness of hip and crotch movements synchronizing, the slow and steady moisturizing and the discreet groans. This piece of music is so engulfing, and it could be construed as foreplay, intercourse, orgasm and pillow talk all by itself, if it wasn't located just merely half way through this album. "Forget the horror here, it's future rust and it's future dust", one of the albums signature lyrical passages, invitingly suggesting to leave all the worries behind for "the fury in your bed".


Rhythmic 'This Orient' brings us further along the lines of coition reaching its liltingly steady building phase. We explore sounds, rhythms and moods as we explore positions and means of further arousal to lyrics about feelings. 'Fugue' might only be an interlude, but an absolutely essential one, as it lays the entire foundation for the back end of Total Life Forever, where the album really excels in every way possible.


Such as on 'After Glow'. To continue our coital paraphrase, this is orgasm, no less. Painstakingly slowly building, it eventually explodes in total, rapturous ecstasy - everything tops simultaneously. Hearts beat and we're drenched in sweat, furiously yelping and moaning.


As 'Alabaster' initiates, its bass throbbing steadily and heavily like a heart after a massive outlet of energy, we're still only finding our feet, speechlessly embracing, heavily breathing, and only gradually regaining our balance and consciousness, uncomprehendingly shaking our heads. By '2 Trees' our heads might have found the pillow. We'll be looking each other in the eyes with deep, mutual, unrivaled intensity. We light a cigarette, we talk about the world, our jobs or our childhood, and we slowly regain our breath and composure - "Don't let go, just breathe slow', Phillippakis explains over blissful, sparkling synthesizer licks and patient guitar patterns. And as 'What Remains' rings out, we're already falling asleep on the pillow, satisfied, smiling, embracing, all in epic harmony.


Total Life Forever is what Bloc Party wanted to do with Intimacy, it's what Justin Vernon wanted to do with Emma, if she hadn't bailed, and it's what The Knife would have done if they weren't Scandinavian and obscure. It's what Håkan Hellström craves but can't explain, and it's what The xx did but won't explain.

Total life forever will never be enough, no.