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Show me someone whose toes don’t tap almost reflexively to each song on Foals’ debut album Antidotes and I’ll show you someone who is, most likely, dead. Foals are the latest British imports to grace the states with their brand of indie electro-rock. Antidotes is a fundamentally fun album of danceable post-punk tracks drenched in methodic electronic melodies that continuously entertain.

I can’t say I grasped much lyrically from Antidotes. Half the time I couldn’t even tell exactly what lead vocalist Yannis Philippakis was saying, and the few instances where I could discern actual words, they didn’t exactly make sense to me. Interestingly, the lack of lyrical meaning didn’t deter me because the instrumentation of the entire album is probably it’s most enjoyable characteristic. Yes, Foals is a band firmly set in the electronic genre, but the way they masterfully layer nimble guitars with techno grooves and syncopated drums with effusive trumpets is like nothing heard as of late. And with some tracks featuring intros over one-minute long, its certain that the band itself even values the music more than the lyrics.

While the entire album is uniformly enjoyable, a personal favorite is Electric Bloom, and not just because I actually understood what Philippakis was saying. It’s a slower song but still manages to mesmerize with murmuring guitars and synthesizers. Also fun is Big Big Love (Fig. 2) which comes across as a surprisingly successful Radiohead/Vampire Weekend hybrid. Even the bonus tracks are noteworthy, with the beat/sample-heavy penultimate track Hummer proving to be the most dance-worthy of them all.

To the naysayers, I must temper this review with my own creative disclaimer. From the start I eagerly jumped onto the new-wave/post-punk/alt-rock bandwagon that brought us bands like Bloc Party, The Bravery, and Interpol - all bands Foals is certain to be lumped in with. Sure, there’s a repetitive nature to all of these sorts of bands wherein all the tracks can seem indistinguishable at best (or trite retreads at worst), but Antidotes has a bit more to offer than that. There’s a freshness to their arrangements and an indisputable musicality that makes what could have been just another British dance-rock album something so much more.