Foster the People: Torches

This is where it's at. Out of utter chaos comes excitement and fun but also a surprising amount of rhythm and soul. This album is made up of a thousand little moments, threads that join together to form a blinding, action-packed blockbuster. This is the culmination of a decade of development in danceable indie-pop, from Phoenix to the last Strokes record. It's all crash and bang but beneath lurks a healthy spirit propelling everything forward to ensure the record never drags.

It achieves liftoff with "Helena Beat," which starts with a soaring synth riff and ends with caramel-sweet "weee-oooohs" and in between is that blazing vocal delivery that defines the band: obscure yet articulate, easy to discern but tough to unpack: close but far, inviting but isolated. Most of these songs feature a chanting chorus that will get stuck in your head at least until the next one. That it constantly, successfully refreshes itself is a gift. If you start to like it, you won't want to stop listening to it.

Mark Foster, the maestro here, has a great sense of songcraft. These aren't a million miles away from conventional pop songs, they're arty enough but not hard to "get." They grab you. "Pumped Up Kicks," as I've mentioned before, has an undeniable appeal, built on that smarter-than-it-looks bassline, a story of a bullied kid coldly seeking revenge. It's both the best example of Foster's songwriting and the singular standout, because though the rest of the album does kick at the same laid-back-yet-tense pace, it tends more toward the hyperactivity. There's the piano groove of "Call It What You Want," an inviting tune and a seething indictment of labels and scene cultures. The grooviness makes the message all the more inviting, because when I listen to this album, it feels like being part of some huge gathering. One nation under a groove, per Funkadelic.

Some of the better moments of the album are the laid-back ones, though: "Waste" is a pledge of fidelity, and the lush score gives way to a clear-cut vocal in the chorus. That's what I like about the album, it knows when to pile on the sounds, knows when to fade them out. There are a million or so moments, loud, quiet, busy, relaxed, all alternating just at the right spot, giving you exactly what you need to hear. Foster also manages to make me stop worrying and love the male falsetto, which I was prejudiced against simply because I never felt it useful, but the contrast between his Strokes/Cakelike lower register and his Jamiroquai/Prince impression upper register creastes a strong contrast of emotion and expression. The vocals here are definitely part of the sonic strategy all throughout. The man knows his work. "Miss You" is like a whispered declaration of love in a hailstorm, time seems to stop for the chorus.

Not a track on this album is to be missed, but there are a couple of truly excellent culminating tracks. "Houdini" features, again, a great piano groove and clapping-snapping rhythms, the great vocal dichotomy, and the utterly relatable declaration that "Sometimes I wanna disappear!" which he then does, into what else but the music. "Warrant," the longest track by a minute, begins with a choral arrangement (or a synthetic one) before thundering over the horizon and singing about making a getaway. Choruses like these dutifully underscore ideas from the verse, act as constantly thoughts underpinning specific statements, everything coming back to "Got to get away / Yeah the warrant's on my head / Got to get away / They want me alive or dead." It looms over the rest of the album, outdoes the rest of the tracks, and ends abruptly never to be heard from again. Fitting that such a fidgety album would focus so much on escape.

We're in the future now, we're all doing a lot at once. We need new ways of discoursing with each other, of revealing our inner selves. Foster seems like a guy with a lot on his mind, so he makes busy music that doesn't linger on any one idea longer than it needs to to establish a pattern here and there before jettisoning. I like that. It's different, but fits well within the trend, making it possibly the best version of the current sound. It might be the musical version of tabbed browsing. When I listen to it, the tracks, these multi-sided jewels are impossible to keep from singing along, yet when it's over, I just sit stunned and think "Where was I just now?" To drop so deeply into something then be shaken out of it so completely and be able to walk away until next time... it's pretty remarkable. This is a piece of work you'll want to keep revisiting. It has a lot to offer.

Buy this album now: iTunes // Amazon.com // Amazon.com // Amazon.ca

Does It Rock? Foster the People, "Pumped Up Kicks"

In ten years or so, there might be a Dazed & Confused-type teen comedy set in 2011. The trailer, or opening credits, or pivotal scene will feature this debut single from Foster the People, and it will transform the song from "kind of a hit that people remember" into "definitive song of the year."

Okay, none of that might literally happen, but I think it's plausible. My retail schmo job enables me to get some insight into people's buying and listening habits, at least to the extent that people still buy CDs. I've heard every variation... who's buying the Foo Fighters, Fleet Foxes, Bieber, Beastie Boys, Buble, some obscure European Tenor, Britney, Arcade Fire... very little surprises me anymore... except for Foster the People. A couple of times a day, someone will ask about them, and their first CD doesn't even come out until this Tuesday, May 23. The only thing most people know of this band is this tune, and it seems to be doing something for them.

Listening to the song, I'm not entirely sure where its power comes from. It's very nice but I wouldn't imagine it as the sort of thing that would grab such a large, diverse group of people. Some come in seeking it, some happen to be in the store when it comes on the radio and ask "What is this?" And I have to tell them it's not out yet.

"I bet they're millionaires already," said one customer, with a blissfully, tragically, utopian idea about how the music industry works. What does this song do for these people? What is it doing for me? It's indescribable.

It's not, like I said, an obviously great piece of work, not one that announces itself, but it's good and fresh and charming. What rocks about it is its undeniable appeal, its ineffable quality that creates this effect in a people who seemed to have given up on ever being excited by music again.

And that, that's what rocks.