Yahoo! Music Review

Released on 26/05/08
Label: Transgressive

Your enjoyment of Foals depends largely on just how much smart-arsery you're prepared to put up with. After all, here's a band that simply revels in statements of utter pomposity, grand, sweeping gestures and an annoying reliance on a musical manifesto that's guaranteed to point them into a corner well before a note has been written for the second album. "Red Sox Pugie" therefore is wildly successful in a number of ways.

Like the best rock and pop music, it'll create a Grand Canyon-sized divide among the chin-strokers and music fans to inflict wounds that will never heal. Furthermore, once the dust has settled and the opposition is trampled into the ground, the victors will take the spoils as they mercilessly mock the defeated. To these ears at least, Foals sound like a second rate Bloc Party, who wilfully eschew anything spontaneous in favour of contrived, studied posing. It may work in the short term but it's highly doubtful their current canter will turn into a gallop.

    by Julian Marszalek