Live review: And they’re off – Foals open stadium tour with a 3Arena stormer

Foals
3Arena, Dublin
★★★★

The Foals project continues apace, and what a fascinating one to watch it is. With their opening albums, the Oxford band marked themselves out as more artful and articulate musicians than many of their contemporaries. Four albums in, and they’ve started adding more muscle to the style, more punch to their pop. Their latest album, What Went Down, is harsher and buzzier than their earlier three – and live the progression is similarly propulsive.

The band have been flirting with stadiums for a tour or two now, but the latest approach is refreshingly old fashioned. Not for Foals the spinning gantries or solo stages that typically cut the 3Arena in two. Instead the band opt for their flat-back five, going hell for leather from the off, furious and frantic at the heart of a dazzling light show.

We're three tracks in before My Number makes the ground floor bounce entirely, while blues and purples bomb the crowd. Then when Yannis Philippakis croons that he'll "bleed just like you" on Providence, the stage and screens above are drenched in scarlet. At about the halfway point the band unload fan favourite Spanish Sahara, building the noise level up on that first dizzying drop to Mogwai-like levels. Green lasers then strafe the crowd with the sort of style that Jennifer Lopez would approve of.

At one point, visuals of falling figures are mixed with footage that makes the venue feel like it’s under waves, and the whole concert coheres into something that feels like a vast, thrilling piece of installation art. Then Philippakis clears the gap between stage and audience in one jump, much to the joy of the crowd and the annoyance of security.

Foals have a well-earned reputation as one of the tightest bands around, but there’s no reason to expect them to be this supple and sure-footed on the first night of a tour. From now till October they’ll be showing arenas around the world who is boss. On this evidence, no one is leaving short changed.