“I buried my heart in a hole in the ground,” goes the opening line on the first track off of the English band Foals’ latest record, “What Went Down,” from 2015.
How do you explain that pounding sound then? Foals is from Oxford, not from London. That might not mean much to American fans, but it’s sort of akin to the difference between being from Athens, Ga., and New York. One is ultra cool, the other is huge and just the place where everyone in music is from.
So Foals has a little bit of a defiant attitude. The band makes a kind of energetic brooding rock that’s spawned from the wreckage of Brit pop. Foals has an admirable DIY ethos, and it appears to know how to raise hell like a proper rock band, sometimes bringing to mind a more aggressive and slightly boozy Radiohead (also from Oxford).
Foals plays College Street Music Hall, 238 College St., New Haven, Saturday, Nov. 5, at 7:30 p.m. $25. collegestreetmusichall.com.
