“You’re about to feel things you haven’t felt since first listening to Korean-pop. Weirdness. An intelligent complexity you are painfully unprepared for, but that you become curious enough to return to.”

It’s been a rough winter for fans of Foster the People—7 years since a full-length album, and 4 years since 2020’s In The Darkest Of Nights, Let The Birds Sing EP—but now we’re eating good. Let’s get that out of the way from the onset: Paradise State of Mind is a good album. Here, we have the lo-fi, laid-back vibes of previous efforts, but also a new disco-pop aggression that takes on several shapes before sticking the landing with a perfectly introspective final curtain. That song, A Diamond To Be Born, encapsulates how I feel about the album as a whole: I don’t love how it starts or how it ends, but I like everything in-between a truly enormous deal. Yet, as time goes on, even that very crust of the sandwich starts to taste delicious.

Fair warning: this album is a grower, not a shower, but when it shows, is shows off! You’re about to feel things you haven’t felt since first listening to Korean-pop. Weirdness. An intelligent complexity you are painfully unprepared for, but that you become curious enough to return to. On first listen, I was admittedly underwhelmed, if not intrigued. I felt like the songs had come and gone, blown away on an insignificant wind. I couldn’t remember many of the hooks. I liked what I had heard. Mostly, it just felt like I had listened to Foster the People, and was reasonably happy with the experience. Some of the sections of music here are strange—presumably something learned while Mark Foster was Lost In Space—but thoughtful, and it’s these moments of the 44-minute runtime most rewarding to unpack.

A new album by such an established band deserves time and careful consideration. This is the band that essentially perfected this particular pop sub-genre, whatever this sub-genre is (I call it jamboree-pop). Their debut, 2011’s Torches plays like a greatest hits album, and their sophomore effort, Supermodel, though under-appreciated, is an underground classic in its own right. With 2017’s Sacred Hearts Club being the last full-length piece of music (and also considering that it was just okay) it’s safe to say devoted fans are actually salivating for this newest release. Now that we have it, we’re savoring it, chewing slowly, trying to make the meal last, knowing we won’t be fed like this again for ages. For this assignment, I figured a week of taking it around with me would be sufficient. I’m glad I gave it time because this is a collection of songs that begs to take you places, because not every song fits every scene or mood. In that way, Paradise State of Mind is a simple puzzle, but when you match up the right song at the right time, the payoff is electric, drug-like.

Kicking things off, See You In The Afterlife sets the sonic direction upwards, essentially revealing the general coordinates this voyage is headed. Lyrics like, “the headlines got us thinking that we’re all gonna die, then convince us that we have to buy a ticket for the afterlife,” hint at the cheeky fun that’s ahead in the next track.

What Lost In Space does is takes that same energy, wraps it up with a very 1970’s red velvet suit, and gives you the album’s apparent shtick: we’re just like, fully disco now! It’s a song I think most people will not dislike, then kind of like, then really start to dig. It’s groovy, stupid and goofy, but it’s warm like a Happy Madison movie.

Take Me Back is the Pepsi you open right before hitting the roller rink with your friends. It feels good like a travel company’s ad for the many tropical places you could visit next summer.

By the time Let Go plays, my friends, you are officially in the meat and potatoes of a Foster the People album. If you’ve ever been sick enough at the hospital to receive an injection of morphine, you’ll no doubt remember the feeling of magma coursing through your veins, cooling, and turning into slow-moving liquid-metal. This is that, musically. In other words, the chill one feels with this song is powerful, undeniable.

It’s unfortunate, then, that Feed Me is so agitating. It’s just got too much going on, too many layers; it’s convoluted and entirely too funky. Here, we have the first of the aforementioned puzzle pieces: there will be a time when this song finds its moment, and trust me, when that happens, you’ll be so stoked for its existence. Until then, if you’re like me, you will fucking hate it, viscerally.

Our titular song swoops in just in time to bring things back down to a comfortable simmer. Another song that feels like filler until it doesn’t. I’m telling you, this album is full of late-bloom 'ahinahina. They’ll lay dormant in your mind, then when they bloom in the way the chorus for this song does, you’ll delight in the spectacle.

Then you’ll face the next song and wonder what the hell “Glitchzig” is supposed to mean—both literally and just, like, as a piece of music. What the hell is going on here? Shades of Kraftwork and Bel Canto will keep you interested, regardless of any adverse reactions. Some might find this new sound to be dreamy, but I’m immediately annoyed; it’s Feed Me part II. So damned busy! It’s like a swarm of bees in percussion form. In the spirit of letting things cook, though, this jam definitely got to me, eventually. Indeed, like most, I look to the online community for conversations surrounding new music; I’m thrilled to find if there any answers or confirmation on the things I’m experiencing in my many listens. Much to my surprise, on this one, I found a redditor who was more in love with this track than any other. They referenced the chorus as an “inescapable earworm”, or something like that. The post has since been deleted, but it pointed me in the right direction, and ever since, I’ve found I do really love the chorus and the lifting sensation you get while listening to Mark Foster sing about being a bird.

The Holy Shangri-La is looking around at the many laughing faces at a late-night gathering and realizing that the room is spinning. You’ve had too much to drink, but at least in this moment, you still feel good, if not a bit woozy. It’s ethereal, it’s moving, intoxicating, but you may well and truly forget it by the morning. But that’s okay! While you’re here, things are alright!

Relying on my wife for the next one, Sometimes I want To Be Bad is like a quick ride on your bicycle to the market for some groceries, back when you were old enough for early independence, but not so old that you cared about much of anything. It is Jamiroquai reincarnate; a crisp and beautiful evening, right as dusk settles over the uptown parks and causeways. For me, the eccentric flute and the pumping bass guitar make me text a friend to say, “thaaaat’s what I’m looking for.” Even on the very first listen, this is the same Foster the People who wrote Best Friend back in 2014.

Now, my friends, we’ve arrived at the penultimate, yet ultimate song of Paradise State of Mind. Longtime fans will be instantly connected back to the highlight of their first album, the Fleetwood Mac-esque I Would Do Anything For You. When the music-video for this song first dropped, it felt good, right? It was finally the type of song we wanted. Little did we know (at the time) that in the grand scheme of the album, and with the perfect placement within the track list, that this would be thee song of songs. Here it is. That feeling. Remember listening to that iconic bassline in The Less I Know The Better by Tame Impala for the first time? Yes, here we are again. Play it on repeat. Shoot, I don’t need to tell you, that’s what you’ll be doing anyway because it feels sooooo goood, and it’s the thing you needed that you didn’t know that you needed. Seriously, if no other song on the entire record was any good, we’d still all be so glad if not for anything but this song.

Since we started this conversation by referencing the closing song, A Diamond To Be Born, and how it has a tepid beginning and end, with a meaty and delicious center-cut, let’s call that good and just focus on all that marbling. Paradise State of Mind is huge and bombastic and great, but probably only if you give it time to slow-cook. I only hope that the casual listener will be so patient.

Is this the sequel to Torches? Do we get to meet Pumped Up Kicks Part II? No! Absolutely not, Paradise State of Mind is entirely its own thing, but for the better. It is something new and fabulous on its own merit, rather than a mere replica of past greatness. If you’ve been with the band for awhile, you’ll be happy for this addition to the catalog, to the story, and ultimately, the live show. If you’ve only ever heard just the one song, you’ve been chasing low vibrations; this new collection of songs will set you right.