Californian three-piece Foster The People are best known for their breakthrough single ‘Pumped Up Kicks’, which was released in 2010. Front man and former jingle writer Mark Foster essentially dressed one of America’s historical tragedies (The Columbine High School massacre of 1999) in a happy hat, and a worldwide hit ensued. It was a good song, but the dark narrative was a strange juxtaposition against the cheerful whistles and happy-go-lucky beat.
A self-titled EP and their debut album Torches (which includes singles ‘Helena Beat’ and ‘Call It What You Want’) followed, and did do exceptionally well across the US, Australia and Britain. The following singles followed the same formula, and Foster’s jingle-writing background is very apparent, their music does lack a certain depth, but bloody hell it’s catchy.
‘Coming Of Age’, the bands lead single from new album Supermodel, is pleasant – an easy, universally identifiable narrative about (you guessed it) coming of age, set against sugary sweet, LA- centric indie/pop and syrupy guitars reverbs.
The album is said to be a comment on fame and how it can change people, and how those around you can also change as a product of the (what I imagine to be the most minimal amount of) fame. It’s a nice idea, but doesn’t carry much weight for the FTP guys, who are still relatively new on the scene, and haven’t really done that much yet, in the grand scheme of things.
The record on the whole is fine, but isn’t really anything to get too excited about, it’s pretty transparent, and different songs seem only to mimic their influences, take ‘Fire Escape’ which just screams Bon Iver, or ‘Ask Yourself’ which is essentially Talking Heads territory.
A second album from Foster The People is like being offered seconds of a meal that you didn’t really enjoy that much anyway, you’ll have a bit more, you suppose, you guess it would be rude not to, but you could really have done without that last slice.
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