Oh, Foals. I do commend them for circling back to their funk inspirations that pursued them in their Total Life Forever phase from 2009 - 2011. But this is too much.
Get ready for my quick comprehensive review of Foals's latest single - Wake Me Up.
A quick disclaimer before I get into talking about Wake Me Up:
With that out of the way - let's get into it.
Yannis said this about the song in Foals's latest Instagram post: "With 'Wake Me Up', I just wanted to write a song about transporting yourself to a better, idyllic situation. I think we all had that feeling of the last eighteen months being like a weird fever dream that felt surreal but very affecting. I think we all wished we could have woken up somewhere else at various points."
With this context, we can see it is another damn lockdown song.
Having engaged with this theme for my upcoming music through university, it does pain me to see artists react to the same themes I've been writing about at the mere surface level, backed with the money of a deal with a literal multinational conglomerate - Warner Music. To me, it creates this very lifeless response to the theme that just feels like an appropriation to suit a need to turn over revenue, therefore creating a piece tailor-made to appeal to the most people and not necessarily break the boundaries or evoke the wonder of the past ventures by Foals. I guess I expect too much artistic venture from a group bound to a contract. Sorry, that thought probably doesn't make that much sense and feels like I'm talking out of my ass in retrospect, but I reckon I'll develop that thought in the coming weeks. I want to quickly mention that the way the song is mixed makes it sound so fake. It feels like every instrument has been purified to its more potential part, and everything has been stripped of any other colour. Now, I do like this effect in kinds of pop and certain songs - a quick mindless example is the vocals on the Pink Pantheress mixtape that Alex has got me onto, but even then that collection of songs still feels so lively. However, that kind of sound just doesn't work for me with this song. Foals songs were all about raw energy and life to me, and that kind of charisma really carried them through their evolving sound and their live sets. But that's just not present here. I've seriously just listened to some earlier tracks of Foals for comparisons and I swear the higher frequencies have purposely been elevated for Wake Me Up - it's so shrill. Even in their previous album I'm listening to In Degrees - the song that's most like Wake Me Up - and it's mixed so cleanly and with much more character.
Quickly compare:
A quick listen to the song shows this new sound direction for Foals. The drums, usually the liveliest part of Foals's arrangements - exudes no life to me. I just remember hearing about how parts of the drums on Antidotes were recorded in the alleyways and how the general recording process was so unorthodox. It meant that the album exuded some life and character. Immediately upon hearing the first drum fill (of like, two) I can immediately tell that the drum was cleanly recorded and sounds as bland as can be, and safely distilled to evoke the strongest âdrumâ sounding parts.
Also, Jack Bevan is really taking it easy in this song. Where I can see boundless potential for semiquaver hits, some snareplay or even a single hihat slurp during the main beat, fills are reserved for the end of phrases. So boring. The overall structure of the song is very standard for a single. Intro, verse, chorus, verse (with subtle arrangement changes), chorus, bridge, extended chorus. The sections are not overly thrilling to me, and I find myself enjoying specific parts of the section rather than the section as a whole, The one section of this song I do really enjoy is the instrumental chorus, where Yannis plays this tinny guitar lick before everyone screams âWake Me Up!â. It's cute, and it reminds me of past Foals songs that I do enjoy. I just regret that it's not in more parts of the song, and instead were treated to Yannis's lyrical flow.
Yannis is singing for the majority of the song, which I find weird. Back in previous albums you had parts of songs where the arrangement and instrumentation took centre stage and helped build this grandiose feeling, even if there were a lot of lyrics in the piece. I wanna bring focus to Foals's fourth album - What Went Down, which has a runtime of forty-eight and a half minutes, split between TEN songs. On average each song has to be about four minutes and forty-nine seconds.
What Went Down may not be my favourite album but it was really good at building this great spectacle of each song, like each was an epic journey to listen to, and I feel that's because of the space that each song provided. You didn't get rushed arrangements that wanted to be finished as quickly as possible. You got songs that took their time to develop and really allowed you to live in the sonic space they created before finishing each song satisfyingly. The biggest culprit of this is A Knife in the Ocean, with a duration of six minutes fifty-one seconds, with the first chorus finishing at two minutes and nineteen seconds. Most early Beatles songs finish after about two and a half minutes, and the majority of their songs are two-thirds of the way done by that point. Why am I dwelling on this? Well it feels like there's no time to appreciate the mix or the arrangement because the lyrics are so incessant. There's only really peace at the beginning of the song and that section I spoke about earlier. That wouldn't be a problem if I felt a connection to the lyrics and the lyrics themselves transported me out of my body. But they don't. The lyrics are just so⦠nothing. They mean nothing to me. I have no emotional connection with what Yannis is saying, and he's not really singing it in an engaging way either. Maybe I'm just tired of hearing Yannis sing about how he's a man. Maybe we all are. I don't know if these are the correct lyrics, and frankly I don't really care, but see for yourself.
Iâm walking through a dream
Iâm walking through the finest place Iâve ever seen. Hey man wonât you wake me up? Hey man wonât you wake me up? Iâm walking through the fire defiant on the wire, burning up my desire Hey man wonât you come, come give me a gun? help me blow the lights right out of the sun so wonât you tell me if Iâm dreaming? I need to know just where I stand. it turns out my hands are useless but maybe Iâm a better man. Wake Me Up! I said Wake Me Up! Iâm dancing on the screens Iâm dancing in the mountains where Iâve always been. Hey man wonât you wake me up? Hey man wonât you wake me up? Iâm kicking down the doors Iâm climbing up the walls of the house thatâs yours Hey man wonât you come, come give me a gun? help me blow the lights right out of the sun so wonât you tell me if Iâm dreaming? I need to know just where I stand. it turns out my hands are useless but maybe Iâm a better man? Wake Me Up! Wake Me Up! I said Wake Me Up! Iâm dancing on the serpents, Iâm dancing on the coals, you deny your own expression, you deny the things you know. Iâm living through the ages, Iâm dancing on the tiles, wonât commit to any handshake, or believe a Duchenne smile. Iâm burning all my bridges, Iâm pulling up the ropes, deleting all the codes, no! Iâm not that man you know. you walk into a trap then you walk into your youth, yr living all that life in a pair of dusty boots. so wonât you tell me if Iâm dreaming? I need to know just where i stand. it turns out my hands are useless but maybe Iâm a better man? Wake Me Up!
It's interesting to see in a live performance that Yannis ditches singing one of the last choruses and just improvises a counterpoint melody to Jimmy's part. I wouldâve loved to hear that in this song! But no, we got another chorus. Cool.
I am not a fan of the gang vocals for the lyric âWake Me Up!â because it is indicative to me of the direction Foals is going, but for the song? It stylistically works. It makes me wince because it doesn't work with the mix too well in some parts but hey, dissonance is cool am I right!!
The bass just before the first verse at 0:33 is freaking weird. It's REALLY in your face. It's playing higher up on the fretboard. I don't really know any other Foals song that's ever done this. I don't know what you think, but I think it just sounds plain bad. Why is it still in the song? I wonder who played it?
Overall the bassline in Wake Me Up is at its best when it's not sustaining, as that doesn't suit the style of the song very well. The bassline is pretty good in the verse though, when it's doing this walking thing, before Jimmy doubles the part on his guitar. This part is quite captivating for me, far more than the Total Life Forever/Uptown Funk-style guitar chords. And that brings me to the one person I do still love a lot in Foals, and that's Jimmy Smith. Even in the songs that I loathe the existence of, and in the face of this shift in genre, production and songwriting style, his parts and arrangement is a standout. The guitar parts that he's playing in the video is pretty great (when it's not that annoying Uptown Funk thing) because they're focused on fast melodies and evokes that great tone Foals is known for. What I don't understand is Foals's new obsession with auxiliary percussion. They must really be into world music right now. I'll also briefly skim over this but the keyboard arpeggiation part that plays throughout the whole song feels very uninspired. When it was in Exits, it was pretty cool. When it was In Degrees, it was a characteristic of that song and worked well. But here it's just sparkly and gimmicky and clashing with the mix a lot. I miss Edwin already, he would have added so much to this to fix it up. The saddest part of me is I can immediately hear how this song would fit in the next FIFA game. Exactly the same way I could tell The Runner was going to feature in FIFA just from the first listen, or how Black Bull would fit in an ad for Jeep. But also - no shade to Foals for this, they have a comprehensive crew working with them for their live show, for their recording process and for their music videos. They all gotta get paid too.
I guess I should speak about the music video that launched with this song. It's alright. I guess the setup is they're playing in an empty venue because of the pandemic and they're briskly covering lyrics and themes from the song in scene settings. The least boring element to me is that red room of cellophane and balloons, and Yannis just kinda walks in and immediately out of the room like âwtf is thisâ. That was kinda interesting. Everything else is just so normal and clean cut and lame to me. Besides the band, everyone's in jumpsuits. Okay.
I'm getting tired of talking about this song but to sum up, not really a fan. I don't feel any need to listen to this regularly because I'm not getting anything new out of this. I do kinda like Jimmy's parts in certain bits, but that doesn't save the song for me. This feels like an uninspired funk single from a band that should focus more on rock and indie elements, in my opinion. Sadly, Wake Me Up has made its way into my head as an earworm and I'll probably hum it until I get stuck into learning parts for Arbes or working on new Orange material. I am a complete cuck for Foals and I probably will listen to this song again and probably enjoy it more, but I look down upon my future self for doing so. 4/10.
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