Mark Foster worked as a jingle writer for Honey Bunches of Oats in Los Angeles. Little did he know that in two years, his song “Pumped Up Kicks” would spend eight consecutive weeks ranked third on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.
The indie-pop band Foster the People will perform at the Rialto Theatre tonight alongside music and art project Young & Sick, the band that designed the cover art for Foster the People’s first album and music videos for its second.
“We are only a couple of seats from being sold out right now, so we expect a sold-out show,” said Kristopher Kerry, one of the Rialto Theatre’s talent buyers.
Foster (vocals, piano, guitar) joined up with his long-time friend Cubbie Fink (bass, backing vocals) and film student Mark Pontius (drums, percussion) in 2009 to create the catchy indie-pop band that is now Foster the People.
A year later, the trio posted their song “Pumped up Kicks” as a free download on the internet, and it became a viral success among listeners within a year. The band’s hit song led it to perform at popular music festivals including Coachella, SXSW and Sasquatch, and landed it a multi-album deal.
The band name Foster the People stems from a misinterpretation of the original title, Foster and the People.
The band is currently on a world tour celebrating the release of its sophomore album, Supermodel, in March.
“They are quite a hot act at the moment and are really good,” Kerry said, “but with only two albums under their belt, it is hard to predict their place overall in the music world. … I’ve always said the difference between a four-star and five-star album is 10 years.
But the way things are looking for Foster the People, I wouldn’t be surprised if they became a much bigger act than they are currently.”
The less-electronic second album follows the success of the band’s twice-Grammy-nominated first album Torches from 2011. While Torches embraced a dance-provoking pop sound, the band focused on a more organic production of instruments in its second album and decided not to use software synth.
The band’s attempt to distinguish itself in a complicated and fame-obsessed world has not been embraced by all critics.
“Instead, [Supermodel is] a collection of snapshots of a band stretching toward a brilliantly kaleidoscopic, eclectic new sound — and almost reaching it,” NME said in its Supermodel review.
The changes in the album’s sound can be attributed to the changes within Foster himself.
After a three-month exploration through Morocco and India, Foster initially recorded Supermodel in Morocco. Lyrics from the album express his conflict between self and others, as in the song “The Truth”: “A purpose is needed before you know that you know, to never wonder what you are, and not forget where you come from.”
