The new project of Slaves guitarist Laurie Vincent and producer Jolyon Thomas, Larry Pink The Human’s latest single is an explosive synth-pop track featuring vocals from IDLES frontman Joe Talbot. The duo describe their fourth single of 2020 as “a contemplative look at missing the beauty in the everyday,” while Talbot adds, “It’s a track about not knowing the magic ‘til the magic is behind us.” The song itself, however, is more likely to help you lose yourself than find the present moment: The verses combine Talbot’s reserved musings with a calming synth hum, but the choruses throttle up into a cathartic thump that simply rules out sitting still.
‘Wasted Days [Inbetweens]’ follows recent single ‘Might Delete Later’ and debut track ‘Love You, Bye’. back in April, and they spoke of the emotional openness that defines the new band. “It’s about putting your deepest, darkest feelings on a plate, as simply or as complicated as you want to,” Vincent said.
LARRY PINK THE HUMAN added: ‘Wasted Days [Inbetweens]’ is a contemplative look at missing the beauty in the everyday. In the rush to reach our destinations how we can often lose sight of the joy in our journeys. An awakening. Doing nothing at all is something very special.”
IDLES return with their highly anticipated third album – Ultra Mono. Sonically constructed to capture the feeling of a hip-hop record (including production contribution from Kenny Beats), the album doubles down on the vitriolic sneer and blunt social commentary of their past work.
“Ultra Mono” is the acceptance of now and I and you. We are not the same but behold something together that is true: the moment. I can not control anything but my ideas, my actions and my emotions, I can not control yours. In allowing our art to be momentary, we give ourselves and you the opportunity to perceive who we all are now as truth. It is an engine of all that we can’t control: our race, our age, our class and our past in the form of what we control absolutely – our music, our now.
Joy is still an act of resistance. No more apologies. We will work hard and work honestly. Ultra Mono is joy’s engine and it goes. Well that’s a bit of good news eh? Joe Talbot & his band of merry men are once again back to put the world to rights. ‘Ultra Mono’ is their first album since the brain meltingly good ‘Joy As An Act of Resistance’ – we’re a little bit excited. There are 2 gorgeous versions too – the vortex swirl will look lush spinning on your turntable but we’re particularly taken by the look of the deluxe version with the ‘ultra mono’ catalogue – it looks like it’s going to be rather lovely.
Act fast enough and you can snag a limited print too – an abstract take on the album cover, perfect for framing. far be it for us to tell you what to do, but we’d advise you get your orders in sharpish for the vortex and deluxe editions even if you miss the print – the last two had tasty limited fancy versions that went very fast.
We hope that you feel a sense of strength and purpose from listening to Ultra Mono. It is meant to fill you with the violence love and the rhythm of now. You are now. You are all. All is love.” – Joe Talbot
IDLES – “Ultra Mono” Out September 25th Partisan Records.
Though taken from the sessions for their record, “Joy as an Act of Resistance”, this song from Idles feels distant from the more hopeful messages of the band’s acclaimed 2018 record. After ramping up with chugging, distorted bass lines, frontman Joe Talbot declares in his signature gravelly tones, “Forgive my crippled head / Our revolution’s dead.” Despite the power and fury dripping from every word, the song feels like the aural equivalent of a tiger pacing around the trapping pit in which it’s fallen.
“Mercedes Marxist” is out as 7-inch backed by “I Dream Guillotine” . Ahead of their sold-out US tour Idles“Mercedes Marxist” – pulled from the sessions for their latest LP ‘Joy as an Act of Resistance.’ Frontman Joe Talbot says: “‘Mercedes Marxist’ was a strange beast for us, after ‘Rottweiler,’ it was the first song we wrote for ‘Joy as an Act of Resistance.’ I was pissed off at what I was and where I was: I was sofa surfing on the weekends and spending the weeks looking after my mum. My life balance was way off and this song reflects just how useless I felt. It was me at my worst and without any buoyancy it became catharsis. It was the last splurge from Brutalism so we omitted it. I like it now.”
Not content with performing one of Glastonbury 2019’s standout, most poignant sets, or being nominated for a Mercury Prize, or picking up BBC6 Music Recommends’ Album of the Year for 2018’s ‘Joy As An Act Of Resistance’, IDLES are striking while the iron’s hot with a follow-up.
Album No 3 is being readied for release right now, with the group announcing on Instagram “Album 3 back in September, before confirming to Zane Lowe that it’s been produced by Nick Launay (Grinderman, Nick Cave), Adam “Atom” Greenspan and Kenny Beats. The latter said: “Idles are the best band in the whole world. This is all I wanna work on. I love what they’re doing.”
Idles have announced that their highly anticipated third album is entitled “Ultra Mono” and will be released on September 25th via Partisan Records. Along with the announcement comes the release of the new single “Grounds,” as well as its music video. It follows the previously released “Mr Motivator”.Ultra Mono was recorded in Paris and produced by Nick Launay and Adam ‘Atom’ Greenspan, along with additional programming by Kenny Beats, with the album sonically constructed to capture the feeling of a hip-hop record. The album also features guest vocals from Jehnny Beth (Savages), and additional guest contributions from Warren Ellis (Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds), David Yow, and Jamie Cullum.
“Grounds” features a more electronic element at play that marches alongside the more familiar hard-hitting rock elements that only they can produce in quite this fashion. The electronic element changes things up enough but feels like the next logical evolution for the band.
IDLES’ Joe Talbot says of “Grounds”: “We wanted to write a song that embodied self-belief, and gave us self-belief – a counter-punch to all the doubt we build up from all the noise we so easily let in. We wanted to make the sound of our own hearts’ marching band, armed with a jack hammer and a smile. We wanted to make the sound of our engine starting. So we did. Thank you.”
IDLES have returned with their brand new single “Mr. Motivator,” the first taste of their highly anticipated third album that will be released later this year via Partisan Records. It’s another pummeling rocker that features the amped up and hyper-aware social commentary from vocalist Joe Talbot. The instrumentation is fierce but the production allows each member a chance to shine. The song’s title and subject matter is one that is certainly timely and relevant – as you’d come to expect from these guys by now.
The track is a battering ram of positivity that’s also the first preview of their highly anticipated third LP due out later this year. The song doubles down on the (self-admitted) sloganeering and social commentary that’s become the band’s signature, yet here more than ever they’re able to take clichés and turn them into music that’s deeply complex and brutally relevant.
Beautifully poignant, IDLES have captured the spirit of humanity despite being in lockdown. The video for ‘Mr. Motivator’ is comprised of numerous home-made workout clips filmed by fans of the post-punk band. Frontman Joe Talbot had this to say about the song:
“We want to start this journey with a means to not only encapsulate the album’s sentiment but to encourage our audience to dance like no one is watching and plough through these dark times with a two-tonne machete of a song and the most beautiful community of scumbags ever assembled. Let’s go. All is love.”
Idles followed up their acclaimed second album, “Joy as an Act of Resistance”, with 2019 single ‘Mercedes Marxist’ and its subsequent B-side ‘I Dream Guillotine’.
The single’s release features a brand new music video is self-directed and features fan-sourced exercise footage and the bandmembers themselves.
At the end of last year, Idles the band completed a 90 date tour around the US, UK and Europe, with a spectacular show at Le Bataclan in Paris on December 3rd, 2018. The entire gig was filmed and recorded, and is now available to pre-order on CD, digital, and three different colored versions of the album, each with different artwork! The vinyl features a double LP, gatefold packaging, and contains a beautiful booklet designed by lead singer Joe Talbot, with photographs from the show and poems.
From Joe: “That show was nothing short of catharsis and nothing more than love. We love what we do and the people who have carried us here, “Our show at Bataclan was the end of a very long journey for us. On that tour we learnt so much about ourselves, each other and the audiences we have grown with over the past 10 years. That show was nothing short of catharsis and nothing more than love. We love what we do and the people who have carried us here, there was no hiding that at Bataclan and we are so very grateful that the moment was captured in all its glory, love and fatigue. Long live the open minded and long live the moment.” – Joe Talbot
The track “Mother” (Live at Le Bataclan) from the new album ‘A Beautiful Thing: IDLES Live at Le Bataclan‘ released on Partisan Records on 6th December 2019.
Joe Talbot, the frontman of the Bristol-based post-punk band Idles, isn’t interested in appointing himself a spokesperson of the people. The music that he and his band make a tense and explosive form of protest delivered with both absurdist humor and deeply personal vulnerability doesn’t exist to prop up political candidates. Which doesn’t mean that he’s not above taking the piss out of the political right; “The best way to scare a Tory is to read and get rich,” he chants on “Mother,” the standout single from the band’s debut album Brutalism.
For IDLES, the personal is very much political, and vice versa. The self-released Brutalism was a DIY success story, building up a cult fan-base through word of mouth and an accessible balance of aggressive music with wit and vulnerability. It’s an ass-kicker of a record, and one with its share of quotable one-liners—though some genuine grief lies at the heart of it. “Mother,” ostensibly a statement of feminism, was inspired by Talbot’s own mother, who died shortly before the album was released.
‘Great’ from ‘Joy as an Act of Resistance.’ out 31st August 2018 on Partisan Records.
Idles’ new album, Joy as an Act of Resistance., likewise catalyzes lived experiences into occasionally acerbic and often hilarious statements about the world around them. Talbot, guitarists Mark Bowen and Lee Kiernan, bassist Adam Devonshire, and drummer Jon Beavis sound like they’re having the time of their lives, even when taking bigots to task or opening up about heavier, more heartbreaking experiences. The album title itself is a good summary of what drives IDLES—they’re not moralizing, but helping to win people over to a more open-minded way of thinking through compassionate yet furious anthems, spiked with a potent dose of biting humor.
“I just have an interest in life,” Talbot says over the phone from the UK’s Bestival. “I love music and I love playing music, so I’m not going to not have fun doing it. Humour is a very inclusive vehicle to have a discussion about savage issues. I’m not trying to lecture people I’m trying to open dialogues.”
Joy as an Act of Resistance. is as good-natured and warm-hearted as heavy, aggressive music gets, its twelve tracksputting a clever and fun spin on topics ranging from toxic male behavior (“Samaritans”) to immigration (“Danny Nedelko”). And Talbot’s never afraid to let absurdity take over, as when he indulges in a bit of chest-puffery in “Colossus”—“I put homophobes in coffins…I’m like Evel Knievel, I break bones for my people”—or the parade of insults in “Never Fight a Man with a Perm”: “You look like a walking thyroid, you’re not a man you’re a gland, you’re one big neck with sausage hands.”
Just as with the making of Brutalism, however, the shadows of some much heavier life experiences hang heavy over Joy. Both Kiernan and Talbot have been open about their experiences with addiction, with Talbot himself having stopped drinking cold turkey at the beginning of 2018. And during the process of making the album, Talbot and his partner were preparing to be parents. Their daughter died during childbirth, and that anguish is echoed in the heartbreaking track “June”: “Baby shoes for sale / Never worn.”
In order to move forward as a band as well as to become the people that they wanted to be, Idles needed to address their own personal struggles, whether that meant therapy or acknowledging their own addictive behaviors.
IDLES are a political band, but their politics seem to boil down to some pretty simple principles: 1) Self-improvement and 2) advocating to make life better for individuals in order to make life better for everyone. Which would explain why they’re not interested in getting wrapped up in campaigning or endorsing candidates. As Talbot puts it, empathy and compassion are ideas that shouldn’t be taken advantage of by people in power.
IDLES have confirmed details for the follow up to last year’s excellent debut album Brutalism. The much anticipated record is titled Joy as an Act of Resistance, and will be out August 31st via Partisan Records. It takes aim at everything from toxic masculinity, nationalism, immigration, and class inequality – all the while maintaining a visceral, infectious positivity.
The Bristol band have also shared the album’s first single, a brilliant pro-immigration, punk anthem entitled Danny Nedelko, which takes its name from one of the band’s close friends (and Ukrainian immigrant). The song is accompanied by a self-directed video that features Danny himself.
Singer Joe Talbot summarizes: “This album is an attempt to be vulnerable to our audience and to encourage vulnerability; a brave naked smile in this shitty new world. We have stripped back the songs and lyrics to our bare flesh to allow each other to breathe, to celebrate our differences, and act as an ode to communities and the individuals that forge them. Because without our community, we’d be nothing.”
‘Joy as an Act of Resistance.’ out 31st August 2018
Bristol punk band Idles have been toiling on the circuit for yonks I recall seeing them at Live At Leeds maybe four years ago, without ever getting a further up the venue listings , although they threatened a while back with a clutch of ferocious singles and the Welcome EP, but it wasn’t until last year that they found a new impetus to thrust them into the spotlight.
Their next EP “Meat” saw a gang of snarling, foaming-at-the-mouth brutes amped up on adrenaline and rage but it’s not pointless angst, not by a long shot. It has never been about waving a fist against nowt in particular . Idles have always focused fury into focus that burrows under your skin and leaves a permanent mark.
On their debut “Brutalism”Idles have distilled their emotions into bite-size chunks of raucous noise. It’s punk, or post-punk, with bruised and bruising guitars flailing before grazed bass and drums hit so hard most people’d snap a wrist, but it’s crucially human. mini-hits “Well Done” and “Stendahl Syndrome” . But although Brutalism may have it’s downer moments, the boundless charisma of frontman Joe Talbot shines through and offers a weird kind of optimism. He is effortlessly poignant without pretence, speaking plain and diving deep into assaults on Tory cabals, British society, the downfall of the NHS, the cult of celebrity, drawing deep from his relationships with such topics and blasting them through the prism of wry punk while galvanised by the loss of his own mother.
Nothing is especially new here – punk isn’t new, nor is humour or political lyrics, but what Idles offer is a sincere view from a place of passion, and that is invigorating. They demand change with a smirk and a revolutionary fervour, some of the material on Brutalism is ludicrously catchy. Almost every track on the LP is a potent call-to-arms that beckons action of some kind.
There’s a thrilling danger ever present whenever Idles are around Idles are one of the most exciting British bands right now and “Brutalism” is such proof.
The Fat Angel Sings 