Foals’ drummer Jack Bevan has found that the bleakness of the news and social media these days have been affecting him. It’s affected the whole band, culminating in two albums mired in darkness, but still looking to the future for answers. It’s not unusual – some of the most testing times in history have coaxed out the most powerful of work from artists, from Rage Against The Machine to early blues music to the riot grrrl movement of the ‘90s.
“The last few years, too much negative stuff has happened to just pass us by,” Bevan begins. “When we’ve been making our previous records, there wasn’t SO much heinous shit going on. Like, the last two years has been a real stinker… in the UK we have the whole Brexit shitbomb which is a nightmare. There’s Trump in America and I think it’s just kind of unavoidable.
“Every time you pick up your phone or watch the television, there’s too much gloom to not let it seep into your life in one way or another. These kind of issues going on, especially the environmental stuff, it’s so much bigger than politics and love songs. It’s a pretty dire situation.
“I don’t think we ever want to become one of those crusading bands or anything, but I just think that in the time it took to make this record, that’s kind of what life’s felt like.”
And seep in it did, into the two albums the English rockers are dropping this year. Today, the hotly anticipated first album drops, Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost Pt 1. It’s a chaotic, phrenetic listen at times, particularly in songs like Syrup, while songs like first single Exits amble along steadily to depict the project’s dystopic world. Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost Pt 2, the so-called “second half of the same locket”, will land later in the year, which Bevan says “has more of a heavier element”. Heavier than the mammoth riffs of 2015’s What Went Down? We’ll soon see.
Heaviness aside, for these albums singer and lyricist Yannis Philippakis did create a world that’s at the cusp of an environmental collapse, marred with ideas of social anxiety and paranoia and full of socio-political turmoil. The album titles, a reference to a Nintendo quit screen message, hinted as much.
“When Yannis thought it up ages ago, the actual name, when it’s presented as a quit screen message on Nintendo, it’s super… unromantic and very direct. But when you take it in the context of music or art or whatever, it can take on so much more meaning. For me, I think it’s like… you can take it in a lot of different ways – there’s optimistic, or there’s a negative, pessimistic statement. You can look at it in one way to mean to cherish everything you’re living right now, but also if you take the pessimistic read, it’s kind of a warning sign that we’re all gonna die,” Bevan explains matter-of-factly.
So if Foals use the Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost projects to express their feelings on the world around them, do they also feel artists have an obligation to publicly stand up for what they believe in? Should fans expect this from their musical idols as a beacon of hope amid the world’s strife?
REVIEW: Five Albums In, Foals' 'Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost Part 1' Is Their Unlikely Magnum Opus
“I’m kind of undecided about that,” Bevan ponders. “I think it’s important to speak up if you’ve got a platform, but also no one likes anyone being preachy. I’d totally respect someone for wanting to keep their opinions private because they’re so divisive. It’s not like a conversation where anyone really wins, when you’re talking about differing political opinions. I personally do speak out a little bit, especially some of the stuff I was talking about like Brexit; it’s kind of beyond party policies anyway and more of a bigger issue.
“I think in situations like that you kind of have to take a side, but at the same time, I guess if it was a band I liked or looked up to… I don’t really look to bands for politics, basically. I think it is person to person. It’s kind of a tough question because we’re wrestling with that ourselves. Like, where do we want to place ourselves in this kind of political [conversation]?
“It’s great that there are people who stand up for important issues, I think having figureheads talking about those kinds of things is really important. But I guess you do put yourself out there in a way that you might get some scrutiny. You’re standing up for people but you won’t get a quiet life for doing it! Maybe selfishly, I would prefer a quieter life than be combative with people online.”
If you’re wondering whether the two records are concept albums, Bevan doesn’t think so. Though the lyrical content clearly have dystopic themes in common thanks to Yannis’ brilliant mind, Bevan says they didn’t go into the studio with a concept in mind, so to call them true concept albums would be disingenuous. Both albums were written in the same sessions though, with the band unable to cut tracks into just one release.
“We’ve decided to sequence the two records so that each one has its particular flavour. I’ve just been listening to the second album earlier today because I’ve had to write notes for mixing and stuff, and basically there’s more of a heavier element but I wouldn’t say it’s mega heavy or anything. It’s a different vibe – we were very conscious to make sure that they were both of an equal quality. We didn’t wanna push one out and then the weaker one came out second. There’s a lot of my favourites [on the second album], there’s a good division of songs between the two albums.”
Black Mirror was a huge inspiration for the band, as was Game Of Thrones – Bevan explains the show’s Isaac Hempstead-Wright, i.e. Bran Stark, is a mate of theirs and that’s how they scored him for the arty, James Bond-esque Exits video.
So if the world is ending and all we can do is sit back and watch the fire burn, what does Bevan suggest we do to get through it? Focus on the good? Ignore it all?
“Party,” he jokes. “No, try to stay off your phone as much as possible. I’m terrible myself, it’s the first thing I do when I wake up in the morning. I pick up my phone and mindlessly check Twitter. It’s one of those things where people are like, ‘ugh, stay off your phones’ but EVERYONE does it.”
And now, the iPhone Screen Time app exists to helps Bevan monitor (but also feel bad) about how long he’s spending online.
“You’ll get a notification like, ‘congratulations! Your screen time is down by 10%! You were only on for SEVEN hours!’ and you’re like ‘oh…’”
Foals' Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost Pt 1 is out now. Pick up Foals merch here.
