The Daily Spin II

Foster the People | Supermodel

Welcome back to the Daily Spin. For the uninitiated, this is the series in which I review an album every day of 2025.

As was the case two years ago, my favorite song from each album can be found at the playlist linked here.

Album: Supermodel (2014)

Artist: Foster the People

Link:

It’s hard to follow any album - to make such an artistic statement once is incredible, to do so time and time again is another beast entirely. I’m always astounded at people who get up and put themselves out there so frequently - even if it’s not always for me, you have to respect the gumption.

It’s another thing entirely to have to follow a project so thoroughly outstanding as Torches is - as a debut, it’s an unreal effort, one of the best four-song opening runs on an album possibly of all time (and that misses the best track on the album in the seven hole!) It’s insane.

Keeping that in mind, it’s not hard to see why Supermodel is a bit of a blank space for me in my memory. Around when that album came out, I was really getting into music in a way I never had before - racking hundreds of streams a day, soaking up as much detail as I possibly could consume to expand my horizons and develop my understanding of the sonic landscape - it didn’t exactly leave me much room for an indie pop album from a group that, at the time, I wasn’t really all that into.

In retrospect, that’s dumb as hell - but it isn’t totally wrong. Supermodel is set the impossible task of following something very, very close to perfection, and being simply great means it feels faded and lacklustre at times. Instead, the group trades the bubblegum sheen of youth for a mature perspective - this is an album that at times takes itself really seriously under all the rock and roll, and it’s a welcome shift - one of the few spots in which I’d say the record really outdoes Torches.

It’s unfair, maybe, to expect a sequel when this very clearly isn’t. Even as this is no Cars 2, I’d still hesitate to call it a project reaching the same heights of the first venture - it’s strong, but leaves a little bit of an empty space for desire.

Rating: 8/10

Best Tracks: Best Friend

Worst Tracks: The Angelic Welcome of Mr. Jones