You would be forgiven for dismissing Foals if your only exposure to this album is the single My Number. It’s fun, catchy, and not too terribly distinct from any of the other dancy post-punk revival tracks to be released in the past ten years from Bloc Party, Two Door Cinema Club, Phoenix and the rest of their ilk. Palm muted guitar lines play against ragged start-stop chord hits over a tight snare beat and background “woo-oo-oo”s. Although there are some nice atsmopherics on the lead guitar in certain sections.

Nice single, but the rest of the album probably isn’t much to write home about.

“Not so!” says Bad Habit, the second single, which trades club-calling and dance beats for spiritual introspection and pleas for forgiveness.

As a whole, the record leans more towards Bad Habit’s modus operandi than My Number’s.  Jangling, Edge style guitar lines and retro beat machines are par for the course, as are Yannis Philippakis’ yearning, breaking vocal lines. But there are far more colors in this album than the “dancy indie rock” label might suggest. The album opens with the aptly titled Prelude, a swelling, hyping number that hearkens back to the Alan Parsons Project’s album intros. It then gives way to Inhaler, which builds its chorus around a huge, drop tuned guitar riff the likes of which are usually reserved for nu-metal acolytes, where they aren’t juxtaposed against warbling British tenors. It should be noted that the last sentence was not a criticism, and that Inhaler is a great track. As the album goes on, we find stand outs like the Rhodes driven Out of the Woods, the raucous new-gospel Providence, wherein the band loses all control. It’s followed by the quiet stillness of Stepson, which is as appropriate a late night fireside track as any. It’s an easy album to dismiss on a few listens, but give it more than three repeats and good luck trying to ignore it.