1) Are You What You Want to Be?; 2) Ask Yourself; 3) Coming of Age; 4) Nevermind; 5) Pseudologia Fantastica; 6) The Angelic Welcome of Mr. Jones; 7) Best Friend; 8) A Beginner's Guide to Destroying the Moon; 9) Goats in Trees; 10) The Truth; 11) Fire Escape
Imposter syndrome wrapped in larger than life pop songs, when no one expected it.
Key tracks: "Are You What You Want to Be?", "Ask Yourself", "Best Friend"
I don't revere "Pumped Up Kicks" as much as many others do but I'm comfortable enough with it that I think its place in the 2010s commercial indie canon is well deserved. It could also never have been anything but a one hit wonder for Foster the People. Not only because the general public's attitude towards artists of this ilk in the 2010s was very much use-it-and-lose-it, hooking onto a random single from a field where ultimately most artists still tried to focus on albums and who perhaps never were in a position to be able to even follow up the freak hit's success to begin with (how many of these crossover acts actually had more than one real hit?). It was also likely to do with how Torches wasn't going to yield that many further rewards to begin with, bearing the sound of a songwriter trying to write another "Pumped Up Kicks" nine more times and not coming close, if you allow a little generalisation. But that song was a big hit and naturally the album was a success because of it, and eventually the time came to record another one and with it more potential hit songs. I don't think Mark Foster believed for a second he could ever pull it off.
The prevalent theme of Supermodel is the fear of losing everything you've worked for, and above all losing track of who you really are. It's full of questions on whether you truly are the person you could or even should be, whether the life you've wrapped around yourself is really the one you want to live and if you can ever feel content about it, whether you can live your life without trying to look back too much on your past decisions regardless of the collateral damage you've caused along the way - and that's just the first three songs. Supermodel is ridden with anxiety as its narrators question everything about everything, full of desperation to cling onto the things you do have and the constant fear that all of that will one day leave you. It's imposter syndrome as a concept album. It could just as well be simply writing exercises, but Mark Foster sounds exhausted and so ready for a good gut-spill throughout the record that I'm willing to believe there's a good amount of truth in there too. This is the big follow-up album to a genuine hit record by a songwriter who - for all intents and purposes based on his texts - is completely mortified of the prospect of failing the expectations, being considered a fraud or a dumb luck fluke for his past achievements and isn't sure if he even deserves to be in this position to begin with. So to beat his demons, he confronts them and writes an album about them. Supermodel isn't a happy record and its wounds feel raw rather than the kind of relatable melancholy much of Foster the People's peers dabble in. It is at times a surprisingly hard-hitting album as it waves its existential questions around, and primarily because of how sincerely Foster seems to be asking them rather than the lyrics themselves (which, to be fair, are pretty good and often very smart in their turns of phrase).
How those emotions are framed is another thing, and it's actually a little maddening just how invisible Supermodel has become in the wider discourse when as an album it goes a considerable length to be anything but. If Torches could be considered rather one-dimensional in its sound, Supermodel is a clear attempt to avoid that criticism once and for all; a friend of mine once said the album sounded like Foster the People trying to mirror every single one of their peers all at once. It's an occasion where "caleidoscopic" sounds like a genuinely befitting descriptor, where so many different sounds and colours explode all around the songs; hints of psychedelia, nu-disco, earnest singer/songwriter "indie" and stadium pop are peppered throughout in equal measures until they form into a singular, multicoloured bouquet of fireworks. Supermodel considers that big emotions require big musical notions, and so each song moves with giant motions, layered with elements and ideas and reaching for the heavens with every gasp. Even the barebones acoustic palate cleansers - "Goats in Trees" and the acceptingly disquieted closer "Fire Escape" - sound engulfing in their attempted intimacy.
In short, Supermodel dares to dream larger than life - and that's why it's so great. That opening run of songs as mentioned above not only confront the listener with the album's running themes head-on but also revel in how wide Foster and his bandmates have cast their net this time. The world-travelling opener "Are You Who You Want to Be?" was the first thing I heard back from this album back in the day, buried in a surprisingly influential year-end mix a friend had made, and it was hard to believe it was the "Pumped Up Kicks" guys: the tropicalia percussion, rhythmically erratic vocal flows and the pogoing chorus that suddenly bursts to life make for a wild, exciting and unexpected ride that never gets old. The album's centrepiece statement is "Ask Yourself", an existential pop masterpiece that runs abandon with the energy of a stadium anthem while in lyrics and performance it panickingly tries to find the nearest corner to crawl in a fetal position in. It's the album's thesis and ideas rolled into one song. The 80s-influenced floor-filler "Coming of Age" is the most upbeat and liberated the album finds itself in, all yacht rock synths and handclap-worthy melodic beats, and still carries that big vulnerable heart with it. All three are among the best pop songs of the 2010s, and each one is firing entirely different guns yet hitting the same targets. It's commendable how every song on Supermodel not just takes the listener to a brand new journey but how well it pulls it off, the album restlessly trying on new skins like it's paranoid that the moment it stands still it loses focus. With that urgency comes inspiration and that constant surprise becomes one of the record's key strengths, all the while the overall production aesthetics still manage to tie these separate together from one another. It's an album that sounds like it's both unravelling and which retains pitch-perfect control of itself at any time, and that's a really difficult combination to pull off well.
The other thing aspect that jumps out is that it's not afraid to properly lean into its pop inspirations either big time. "Pumped Up Kicks" was an incredibly catchy pop hit dressed up in humble ramshackle fittings, and for the sequel Foster the People have allowed themselves to embrace the power of massive melodic hooks without having to hold back. The songs on Supermodel are ambitious and unashamedly universal and they make the classic mix of
downbeat lyrics mixed with upbeat music sound like something fresh and noteworthy again. The sharpness runs through even the more outlying cuts, i.e. the psychedelic flourishes of "Pseudologia Fantastica" (where those
MGMT comparisons finally have some ground) and the crunchy, almost
shoegaze-y textural walls of "A Beginner's Guide to Destroying the
Moon", both which hint at an entirely different album and even a band but which still hold the same widescreen melodies. The choir & horn-propelled firecracker "Best Friend" runs back
and forth with the energy of Sonic the Hedgehog having a panic attack while its bass lays down the meanest groove of the album and the song having an overall feel of someone sticking a number of choruses together and pretending they're verses et cetera, and even the heartwrenching epic "The Truth" sweeps grand motions right from the emotional core of the record, hand raised into the sky and beckoning everyone who hears it do so in resonant unison. Grand
gestures crash into skyscraping melodies and spine-seizing rhythms.
I rarely find myself going on such hyperbole mode, especially from an album by an artist I otherwise don't really have time for: I've made my opinion on Torches clear enough and anything following Supermodel has sounded like the works of a band who have found themselves at complete loss of direction and unable to get their bearings back. But the results speak for themselves. This was an album I didn't expect much from and yet found something more from it than I could have ever anticipated. Supermodel is one of the best pop albums of its decade and at least half of it is well secured in the pantheon of the decade's key tracks, and as a cohesive piece of work it's both became a source of shared joy with likeminded people as well as a record that has hit a little too personally at times as the arrows it's fired have suddenly breached my defenses. It's such a vibrant yet emotional record that it's absolutely wild to me it's never mentioned by anyone ever. This is Foster the People's actual legacy, not their one hit.
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