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The Jam’s 1978 Down In The Tube Station At Midnight. Pink Floyd’s 1977 Animals featuring the Battersea Power Station – minus the inflated pink pig. The Kinks’ 1967 Waterloo Sunset. Infamy abound with The Clash’s 1979 London Calling and Sex Pistols 1997 God Save The Queen. To the more modernised features of Underworld’s 1997 Born Slippy, The Streets’ 2001 Has It Come to This? and Lily Allen’s LDN in 2006 …

London has always been a defining spirit in music and culture.

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It is always a privilege to book a London weekend trip away with the missus, and is certainly always a privilege to head down for a gig. Be it a standardised pub gig or a full-blown stadium concert.

We were able to see now-turned indie trio collective Foals at Olympia London last Friday. Musically tight with the unnecessary addition of it being too loud, it was the first night of a four-night quartet of performances in the same venue. With a deluge of stunning visuals that were equally impressive, it was an emphatic night dripped in heroic saves, villainous moments and that momentous feeling of being there in that moment with 2,000 others – and that one moment with that poor lad who definitely sh*t himself.

From the lightweight summer anthropic(s) of their new material, 2am and Wake Me Up – – with fitting attributions to older works with Spanish Sahara and Two Steps, Twice being played out in their full entirety – – to the heavier divisions of encore-ladled Inhaler and What Went Down that brought out the unexpected-but-welcomed mosh-pit dwellers from the undergrowth, Foals at Olympia London in April would forever be classed as one of those memorable nights.

The oscillating waves of back-catalogue music was ethereal and immensely enjoyable as some of their earlier work is what I enjoyed most of Foals. No doubt this was a fitting nod to departed keyboardist and founding member Edwin Congreave who left late last year. Still, there is a saying where you deliver your best art when you become more self-destructive. Does this ring true most for Foals’ newest Life is Yours? We’ll have to wait and see.

Foals: 29/04 – 02/04/2022.

//Setlist\\

Wake Me Up

The Runner

Mountain at my Gates

2am

Olympic Airways

My Number

Black Gold

Looking High

Birch Tree

In Degrees

2001 (Life is Yours was played depending on what night you caught them on)

Late Night

Spanish Sahara

Providence

Inhaler

Encore

Black Bull

What Went Down

Two Steps, Twice