Loyal Like Sid and Nancy- Foster The People Review

Image result for foster the people sacred hearts clubI never really heard much Foster The People beyond memes of Pumped Up Kicks before the III EP came out earlier this year. I listened to it a lot, with its captivating hip hop sound that ranged from angry to pleading to happy to hopeful to dreamy. But eventually my interest tapered off, and so did everyone else's- the songs are no longer in high rotation on alternative radio In addition, only one of the songs, Doing it For the Money, charted at all on the Billboard Alternative chart, and has only dropped.


So this is a lot of pressure on Foster The People to come out with new music, and hopefully their new album. They did both today, releasing a promotional single for their new album, because the actual announcement of the album almost three weeks ago didn't get much press. When I saw the new song, I listened right away, even though there's a new album from Sir Sly, a band I like much better. The song starts with the same hip hop beats, with the addition of house-style synthesizers. The first rap-like verse isn't bad, but it makes no sense and doesn't have a good rhyme scheme or cadence part from its stressed/ more stressed line end pattern. Then with a synthesized horn, Mark Foster launches in to a falsetto chorus backed by summery notes, which sounds very poppy. It continues with the normal singing voice used before the chorus through the rest of the song, and ends with a horn solo.

The best parts of the song are its driving and intense mood, house-style beats, and great song structure. There are a few major issues though, mainly in the lyrics which have no cohesion and the various instruments which don't go well together, like some kind of horn(hard to tell which its so electronic) with house music. The song's title invokes the murder of Sex Pistols' bassist Sid Viscious's girlfriend Nancy in a case in which Sid was the main suspect. That title is a great summary of the song, murky and with a general idea of what happened but with most of the details lost.
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