The latest additions to the May 2009 All Tomorrow’s Parties festival line-up curated by The Breeders were announced today:

FOALS
Ex-Hella member and drumming genius ZACH HILL
The much hyped THE SOFT PACK (formerly The Muslims) and
LA based post-rockers THE HOLLOYS

FANS STRIKE BACK VOTE: THE FIRST TOP TWENTY!
Each week ATP approach the top 2 bands and ask them to play the festival. If they can’t do it, they approach the next two. Keep checking back here for news on how it’s going.

FANS STRIKE BACK WEEK ONE CHART:
1 Sufjan Stevens
2 My Bloody Valentine
3 Beirut
4 Kraftwerk
5 The Knife
6 Eels
7 MF Doom
8 Jesus and Mary Chain
9 The Magnetic Fields
10 Flight of the Conchords
11 The Flaming Lips
12 Dan Deacon
13 Death Cab For Cutie
14 M83
15 MGMT
16 Electric Wizard
17 Jeffrey Lewis
18 Jesu
19 Robert Wyatt
20 Wolf Parade

If all those bands in the Top 20 played any festival, it’d be the best ever… apart from perhaps MGMT who are rubbish.

Anyways - more news when we get it folks!

Oh, and tickets are on sale now… try www.wegottickets.com as they don’t charge stupid amounts for booking fees.

Foals have confirmed details of their debut album.

The band will release Antidotes in March 2008.

The tracklisting is:

‘The French Open’
‘Cassius’
‘Red Socks Pugie’
‘Olympic Airways’
‘The Race For Radio Supremacy’
‘Balloons’
‘Heavy Water’
‘Two Steps, Twice’
‘Big Big Love (Fig. 2)’
‘Like Swimming’
‘Tron’

You can read my glowing recommendation of them here.

Foals seem to split opinion. I have a couple of friends (no, really) who don’t like them at all. They feel they’re derivative, un-original and just plain boring. I don’t agree. I’ve not been more excited about a new band for some time. To me they don’t want to sound like anything other than the sounds that are in their heads.

Let’s take the single “Balloons” (released today) as an example. If any other ‘indie’ band in the UK covered this song, it’d quickly descend into a nonsense barrage of guitars, some shouty vocals and general boredom. However, Foals manage to mix a whole host of instruments and ideas into its three minutes. The twisted keyboards, saxophone and guitars fight for your attention, brawling for supremacy. I could coin the term ‘math-pop’ to describe their mixture of Talking Heads, Roxy Music and Battles into one, pure, blend of wondrous music. Their jittering rhythms and twisted riffs are something that has started to appeal to people who want something just a little bit more from their pop music.

The other thing I like about them is that they’ve not released their album yet. There must be a huge amount of pressure on them to put out a long player, but they’ve resisted. They’ve released singles, steadily, over the past year, toured relentlessly and generally just gone about being a band in the old fashioned manner. Building a fan base and sparking interest. I’m not going to call them the best hope for British music. But, for once, it’s nice to be able to champion a band from the UK that sparks something in me that I’ve not had from an act this side of the Atlantic in some time.

“Ballons” as performed on Later… With Jools Holland