Foals announce seventh studio album and share new single ‘2AM’ – listen

Foals have announced a new album and shared its lead single – you can listen to ‘2AM’ below.

‘Life Is Yours’ will be the Oxford outfit’s seventh studio record and their first as a three-piece, following the departure last year of longtime keyboardist Edwin Congreave. Written largely at the band’s south London rehearsal space, the album is intended as an upbeat riposte to the COVID-ravaged last couple of years, with work on it beginning during the winter lockdown of 2020.

No release date or track listing for ‘Life Is Yours’ has yet been revealed; it will arrive some time in the summer. In a statement discussing ‘2AM’, frontman Yannis Philippakis said: “Musically ‘2am’ is one of the poppiest songs we’ve ever written. It’s about repetitive cycles of destructive behaviour, which I think lots of people can relate to, and certainly it’s an expression of something that I struggle with.”

He concluded: “There’s something cathartic about expressing that feeling to this upbeat music that’s got a sense of release and the hope of resolution.” The new track follows ‘Wake Me Up’, which offered the first taste of the new album in November. ‘Life Is Yours’ follows on from ‘Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost’, which was released in two parts in 2019. Those records were the group’s first without founding bassist Walter Gervers, who left amicably in 2018.

Now, the one-time five-piece are reduced to the trio of Philippakis, guitarist Jimmy Smith and drummer Jack Bevan, with Congreave announcing last December that he would depart to pursue a postgraduate degree in economics, whilst also citing concerns over the environmental impact of international touring.

In an interview with Rolling Stone UK last year, Philippakis said the group’s new music will be “ready for you to party to.” Foals will tour Europe from April onwards, with a slew of UK dates in the diary.

Foals, April 2022:

26 – Newcastle, O2 City Hall

27 – Brighton, Centre

29 – London, Olympia

30 – London, Olympia

May 2022:

1 – London, Olympia

2 – London, Olympia

5 – Blackpool, Empress Ballroom

6 – Blackpool, Empress Ballroom

8 – London, O2 Brixton Academy

June 2022:

29 – Manchester, Castlefield Bowl

July 2022:

8 – Leeds, Millennium Square