A Band That Cradles Its Rock, Even Under All Those Layers Of Expectations

Yannis Philippakis, lead singer of the emerging British band Foals, spent most of Tuesday night with both his hands on his chest. He wasn’t being shy; he was playing the guitar. Like the bass player and the other guitarist, he wore a short strap, so the instrument was almost under his chin. And like them, he worked high on the fretboard, peeling off nimble riffs without ever uncrooking his arm.

The band had come to the Bowery Ballroom to play a short, tight set in support of an album that hasn’t been released yet. “Antidotes,” the debut Foals album, is scheduled to be out in Britain on March 24; Sub Pop plans to release the American version two weeks later. And on Tuesday night Mr. Philippakis seemed to enjoy the chance to play for a receptive audience full of curious listeners who had — as yet — no strong feelings about his band.

Suffice it to say that Foals inspires stronger feelings across the ocean, where it’s possible for a band specializing in taut, knotty, danceable post-punk to be considered the next big thing. Foals appeared on a recent cover of the excitable music magazine NME, given pride of place on a list of “new bands that will define the year”; inside the keyboardist Edwin Congreave was quoted saying: “Hype is like a fever. It makes you feel ill.” On the band’s MySpace page there is a sarcastic and defensive self-description: “SNOTTY ART SCHOOL DROPOUTS HUNGRY FOR THE DOLLAR.”

In America no band with a yelping singer and a jittery sound is likely to be considered money-hungry or definitive of 2008. Still, it’s not hard to figure out why the Brits are so worked up. This music is rigorous enough and weird enough to separate Foals from the dance-punk explosion of a few years ago. Bands like Bloc Party and Battles are common reference points, but Foals also evokes — perhaps unintentionally — 1990s American post-hardcore bands like Clikatat Ikatowi and All Scars. Or maybe they just evoke that mythical, ever-recurring moment when young noisemakers hike up their guitar straps and start playing dance music.

During “Two Steps, Twice,” a glimmering two-guitar ostinato set the scene as the precise rhythm section arrived, slow and heavy at first, then twice as fast. After a set punctuated by an unexpected outburst (apparently one of the musicians wasn’t feeling well), the band members returned for an encore, with Mr. Philippakis gamely playing dumb.

“The people upstairs were like, ‘It’s tradition, you have to do it here,’ ” he said of the encore, as if he were describing an exotic ritual instead of a rock-club cliché. And with that, the band members jumped into “Mathletics,” twitching in time to a disco-derived groove.

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