Following on from their hectic Falls Festival sets down the east coast Foals continued to make sure fans got their fix of What Went Down and the usual sweaty antics they’re known for bringing to live shows, with some excellently attended headline sideshows. Both Larry and myself split it up and hit both headline dates in Sydney and Melbourne within the same week and had a look at how we’ve both noticed the Oxford boys’ to have changed/developed in between Australian visits and the age old question: who did it better, NSW or VIC?
Okay first thing to get out of the way, obviously, I was passing through Melbourne for this show so I can’t really comment on the Festival Hall as a long standing venue (though I did find out The Beatles’ had played there at one point…). For Foals, Django Django and Mansionair though, the venue hosted a sizeable crowd well, even if being seated in the balconies on the side meant you couldn’t really see much of the band without squinting. I’d seen both Django Django and Foals before, so I could picture in my head how good the drum breakdowns near the end of the Djangos’ set, say, were in my head, we had a side view.
I’d never seen Mansionair prior to this show and unfortunately only caught the last few songs of their set. Their cover of Future Islands’ “Seasons (Waiting On You)” turned heads and went down particularly well, I was glad to have heard their spin on one of my favourite tunes of 2015 in this capacity.
Django Django? Last time I’d seen the band was on their last Falls Festival trip; they were performing at The Zoo in Brisbane and it was stupidly hot (slow clap for Queensland in the summer). One thing in particular I took away from their supporting set tonight was just how tight they’ve become as a live band since I last saw them. The music they’ve produced so far is relayed in such a blistering quick fashion that you’d think the band would need to be able to live up to it as well on the live front, but there was something much more precise and sharp about the way they played this time around. They didn’t stop much to chat, rather burning through the material and ensuring people were dancing and suitably amped for the headliners by the end of the set.
In terms of the headline set list, there weren’t that many surprises. Then again, having come off the back of Foals’ set over New Year’s, it’d be silly to think that things would veer too much off path from the already well-oiled live show they’ve been touring until this point. Festival Hall was lit up with different shades of blue and green, became washed over with reds and purples during the slower moments of the set and when the lights would shine on the crowd purposefully at different points, it was awesome to see so many people on the main hall floor moving together in such furious unison to the music.
Yannis addressed the Melbourne crowd a few times during the set as if he was returning home to a familiar crowd of faces but didn’t lose sight of the job at hand. Again, Foals are obviously a band in demand with the release of What Went Down, so it made sense for these shows to represent the harder, chaotic vibe the new album champions. “Snake Oil”, “Mountain At My Gates” and “What Went Down” (the latter as part of the encore) are excellent cuts and, when thrown in alongside earlier songs including “Blue Blood”, “Spanish Sahara” and Holy Fire standouts “My Number” and “Late Night”, you can almost track the musical development Foals have undertaken in the last few years to a tee.
There was one point during the show that Yannis stepped behind the microphone near the end of the main set and slightly breathlessly quipped that this Melbourne crowd had edged Sydney’s crowd out in the getting completely fucked up and enthusiastic states. Take that, New South Wales (which feels wrong, considering the South Australian in me instantly should throw my loyalty behind any non-Victorian…) – there’s something that always feels a bit cheap about these type of comments at shows; yeah, it’s a good way of amping the crowd, but a lot of the time you can tell it’s a time killer while your guitarist re-tunes or your drummer takes a breath. On this night though, the adrenalin was running high out in the crowd and the band was definitely vibing off the energy being fed back to them that having Yannis proclaim his thanks in this way almost fell on deaf ears – people were screaming and cheering for more anyway.
I’ll always have a lot of love for Foals as a live band; they can do a lot on stage without looking like they’re running through the motions of a set list that they’ve probably been touring for months at a time. I hadn’t seen them play a headline show on a stage like this in some time but comparing this Festival Hall show to the one I caught in Berlin back in September, the band is on some A-grade energy right now. What Went Down was released at the right time for them I feel, and I was stoked to have had the chance to see them twice in a week – did not become sick of it at all.
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Earlier that week, the band played Sydney and it was wonderful. Django Django were on form, delivering a set filled with high energy that amped the crowd up appropriately for the main attraction. Having seen Django a few times this past eight or so months, they are still playing much the same set as they were at the beginning of the new album cycle – but it has been at festivals that I’ve seen them. It’s a set that still focuses almost entirely on their first record. If you’re a fan of the new record you’d be a bit disappointed – but their first record is that good that you’re probably not going to be too worried.
And as for Foals – well, it’s hard to know if Melbourne was better than Sydney, but the Sydney crowd definitely gave it their all – as did Yannis and the band. The theatrics weren’t quite as intense as some of his previous tours down here – jumping from balconies and what not – but he did get into the crowd at the end of the night, hugging a fan on someone’s shoulders along the way.
The sets were also identical between the two shows. Festival Hall got the exact same run of songs that Sydney did earlier in the week. But it’s no surprise – they’ve nailed the set list, bringing on board some of their older favourites with the best of their newer material. At only 14 songs, however, the only criticism is that I wish it could have been longer!
Across their four records and 11 years together, Foals have become one of the best live bands – and recorded bands – on the planet. And neither the Sydney show – nor the Melbourne show by the sounds of it – took anything away from that statement.
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