Holy Fire is, in many ways, much like Total Life Forever; an immersive collection of unbearably tight tracks.  Emotive, nuanced and accomplished, it successfully edges Foals ever closer towards their zenith. The sense of a band succeeding in being esoteric to the point of alienation remains, but it gradually fades beneath a growing compulsion to be comprehensible; Foals have finally made a record that they want people to figure out.

The fine strokes of brilliance remain; riffs yearn to escape the nether-limits of the fretboard and reverb cascades around Yannis Philippakis’ vocal melodies with glorious effusiveness. ‘My Number’ is as close as Foals could ever venture towards a populist anthem, turbo-charged with three clashing hooks and ‘ooh’s reminiscent of none other than ‘Barbara Streisand’- surely anathema to these hip Oxonians. ‘Inhaler’ oh so nearly gets lost in its own hazy allure, before a riff drawn straight out of Muse’s latest growls out of the speakers, blasting away the effect-clad cobwebs as Phillippakis screams his yearning for ‘SPACE!!’ into being. The entire work is dressed up with these beautiful flourishes; tremulous flits and spikes that punctuated previous records merge into an ubiquitous, sumptuous backdrop that confirms the band’s burgeoning status as stadium-fillers. Foals have moved from the unwieldy, fragmentary sounds of Antidotes towards an atmospheric, texturally compelling aesthetic that demands attention in its apparent lack of effort- it somehow bursts with sprezzatura.

This is complemented by the intensity of Yannis Philippakis’ lyricism; his words zip out of the soundscapes and lend even more personality to already uniquely polished tracks. ‘Late Night’ lets the sounds fade (with their intervals sounding remarkably akin to The XXs ‘Night Time’) as desperate pleas take centre stage; ‘oh mama did you hear me/calling out your name’ or ‘I’ve been round two times and found/That you’re the only thing I need’. It may be repetitious, but Philippakis is far from triteness; there is a refreshing directness to his writing that represents progress. Lyrics weave across the album with fairly stock imagery- lost cowboys, sailing away, getting out of the woods- but this becomes poignant in delivery; plaintively weighted with personal pronouns. Regrettably, there are moments that become tiresome, the close to ‘Late Night’ being an example, and ‘Bad Habit’ is, appositely, the only track that feels like a regression into lazy, wilful obfuscation.

Still, Foals have pulled a remarkable record out of the proverbial bag. These precociously talented, highly analytical and ultimately difficult individuals have made an album infinitely more accessible than their previous efforts, without sacrificing all the qualities that made those works so distantly, coldly brilliant. Foals are still idiosyncratic, Foals are still profound and Foals are still just that little bit out there. Indeed, the trippy melodies and oozing rhythms are here in spades; they are sharper, spikier, punchier. The band retain the elusive core that confirms their high esteem, but in doing so they pare back the fogginess to make a work that positively soars at its highest points. Holy Fire, appropriately, burns with a cleansing flame.