The Foxholes 2024
Flora i Fauna
Back with air in vocal cords, Catalonian trio reach the ten-album mark with their dynamic mysteries still intact.
Every experiment must be contained, and this ensemble seem to know the failsafe rule well enough to follow the strictly instrumental monochrome of their ninth studio offering "Hex" with seven numbers which are so bright as to occasionally dazzle the listener. Well, actually there are six pieces, as the platter’s finale reprises its opener, but it colors the already-familiar melody too differently to grasp such ouroboros-like roundness at first, before repeated spins bring the album’s concept into focus; and it only emphasizes the collective’s refusal to stay in one place, because even going round in circles can amount to progress. And the progress on display is almost stunning in the songs’ embracing of symphonic passages and serrated riffs.
Of course, a new take on 2010’s “La Malbouffe” appended to the physical disc may smear this impression by signing off with a relentless piano-to-guitar figure, yet no bonus will be able to break the flow of the album’s principal body and the title track’s fixation on bluesy sort of heavy psychedelia and molten six-string lines. There’s too robust a framework between the hard-rocking motif of the magnificently cinematic “El Propi Misteri” – whose orchestral gambit is distilled to Max Moritz’s e-bass and Jonah A. Luke’s voice that carry momentum until Ángel Millán’s insistent drums begin to propel it to delicious delirium – and the techno drive of “Tots Callats” which wraps the same tune in retrofuturistic sound effects. And if “Tota la Por” deceptively sticks to metal essentials and boasts an infectious refrain, “Rock Paladinus” packs a similar dynamic drama into a mini-epic, while the frenzied “Homenatge” has folk harmonies imprinted on the otherwise sharp attack of voices and licks that unfold into an arresting sonic tapestry.
But then, the brief, although groovy “Alfa i Omega” adds a rock ‘n’ roll flourish to the immensely satisfying swirl of songs, and that’s what should instigate a fresh start of the album. On and on, the cuts of “Flora i Fauna” keep on giving.
*****
