Live Review: Foals & Mitzi

Mitzi were a well-suited opener for the evening's proceedings, with bass-heavy electronic music that made for easy dancing and a cool atmosphere. Very much in the vein of Cut Copy and similar acts, the four-piece warmed up the night befittingly.

Sometimes it's easy to forget that at the core of Foals is a party band. They revel in inciting chaos and frontman Yannis Philippakis basks in the sweat and spit of a claustrophobic room pounding with a baying audience's energy, if his numerous crowdsurfing exploits on the night were any indication. With the heat rising quickly, the Oxfordian five-piece showed no mercy, bounding from newbie, Prelude, straight into Total Life Forever. By the time Antidotes' faves like Olympic Airways and Balloons had been performed with speed and intensity, it started to feel like the crowd had bonded into one heaving room of hands raised high and feet lifting off the ground.

Despite the band barely speaking between songs, we were entranced as they wove their way through Spanish Sahara, a song totally transformed when performed live, wherein it became a collective singalong crashing into its climax with force. Newer songs were just as well received, My Number fitting perfectly into their discography with its jaunty guitar riff, many already knowing the words and crying out loudly over Philippakis. Elsewhere, Providence was taken in by curious ears and stilled feet that quickly became pandemonium once the frontman threw himself into the crowd, guitar in hand, without missing a beat. The encore kicked off with Inhaler, perhaps the biggest anomaly in their work so far, and an absolute beast live when that all important key change hits. Ending on a buoyant Two Steps, Twice, it served as an astonishing reminder of how far they've come, and the exhilarating direction they're heading in next.