Earlier this year, Oxford natives Foals toured the country ahead of the release of their latest album, Holy Fire. The immensely talented lads have been releasing music together since 2008 and sure know how to do it well. With a constantly evolving sound that has a reputation for its heavily melodic and rhythmic attributes, their latest LP is easily their most sophisticated yet. 

Holy Fire easily finds itself counted as one of our musical highlights of 2013 thus far and just months after its release, the band have announced they’ll be returning to Australian shores to play a string of shows around the country. We recently had a conversation with the band’s drummer, Jack who shared stories of days spent lying in the sun in Buenos Aires and the occasional hummingbird sightings a rockstar’s life allows. Read on.

Holy Fire: The Record

I think with this record we felt like we were just going to write without giving ourselves any restrictions. In the past we’ve done things differently, I mean with the first record we’d never made one before so we had nothing to go by. Then on the second we set ourselves restrictions that were going to help us ensure that we didn’t make the same record again. This time I guess we just decided to fuck it and just write -- so if we ended up writing a one minute punk rock song or a nine minute post rock song we would just go with it and not worry until the end. I mean we’re lucky though, it could have turned into a big bag of shit! We did end up with a lot more material that didn’t always make it onto the record but we put things together in such a way that we made a cohesive record. It’s our most diverse in terms of style and tempo and that kind of thing.

Milk & Black Spiders

Its probably my favourite track on the record, it kind of does everything I would want it to do in a track. I mean, I think its really pretty in the beginning with its guitars and drum beats then its got quite a big build so for me its great. I do really love all the tracks on this record -- out of the three that we’ve made this one’s what I’d say I’m most proud of. I feel like there’s always a track that I’ll be in the mood to listen too. Yannis had a guitar loop that he’d been fiddling around with in his room and he played that for us one day and I’d been practicing separately and had a beat that we put over the top. The whole first half of the song came together by us jamming it out. Then there was this dance track that had a pulsing bass which inspired some of what we put onto the track. As well as that, there was something separate that we’d all been jamming which sat really well and in the end it all just fit itself together. 

Inhaler: The Video Clip

We’ve worked with Dave Ma, who’s this amazing director that we’ve known since like 2006. At the time he was working in a kebab shop in London and was just coming down to take pictures of us. He’s Australian, and basically he had a whole lot of ideas for the Inhaler video which sort of conveyed the sense of claustrophobia and a need for space. It was actually quite a hard video to make, there’s a scene where we’re playing in the pool and he was actually running around firing fireworks at us. We were just playing and he was shooting at us -- I thought I was going to have my eyes blown out.  

Visits to Australia

I think there’s just something about going to the other side of the world and to be able to play to that many people is not something you ever grow to expect. Its really not normal. I think when we’re back its around the time of my birthday so I’m definitely going to have to organise some sort of after party. 

Touring the World

I find that when we’re on tour for a long time there’s moments that happen every now and then where I think, “Fuck. This is amazing and I can’t believe its what I get to do”. It actually happened to me earlier today, I’d been sitting on a deck chair in the sun for like five hours and I looked up and saw a hummingbird and all I could think was, “Fuck -- that’s a hummingbird in the wild, this is ridiculous!” But I don’t know, like we played the Royal Albert Hall the other day in England which is just such a big deal to us, its one of the most prestigious venues we’ve got over here and it just felt really amazing. All of our families came down, it was my cousin’s first ever gig, which was really quite sweet... 

“I’ll know I’ve made it when...”

I feel like its really hard to answer that question without being a dick. I could say, ‘I’ll know I’ve made it when I always fly premium economy instead of just economy’, but we might not actually ever get to that stage! [laughs] actually the other day I not only put down the wrong day of the week but the wrong fucking year in my application to arrive in Brazil, so maybe I’ll know I’ve made it when I don’t remember what fucking year it is.