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IDLES

Joseph Talbot (IDLES)

IDLES X Magda Archer - Brutalism : Illustrated Lyrics

    A striking and thought-provoking collaboration between IDLES frontman Joe Talbot and artist Magda Archer, containing all the lyrics from IDLES' first album Brutalism alongside provocative artwork by Archer. Toxic masculinity. Class divisions.

    Mental health. Bristol-formed band IDLES started recording their first album, Brutalism, in 2015. In the two years that followed, frontman Joe Talbot’s mother passed away, resulting in a turbulent state of grief that would come to shape the verbally blazon and emotionally raw album that then appeared in 2017.

    In the seven years since the release of Brutalism, Talbot’s words, in the context of the band’s music, have grown to represent a liberated show of vulnerability and an aggressive response to the societal ‘masculine’ ideal of silencing and withholding emotion. IDLES’ first ever book marks a new and exciting form of creative collaboration for the band. Breathing a different kind of life into Talbot’s fiery lyricism – with expressive typography, hot-pink ink and Magda Archer’s unique artworks – it shows that a book can be a work of art in itself.

    In this celebration and reinterpretation of the band’s first album, Magda Archer’s artwork enters a joyful and liberating shouting match with Talbot’s lyrics – an unexpected and bold conversation between two like-minded artists.

    Idles

    Tangk

      TANGK is the righteous and vibrant fifth album from madcap truth-seekers, IDLES. Pronounced “tank” with a whiff of the “g” - an onomatopoeic reference to the lashing way the band imagined their guitars sounding that has since grown into a sigil for living in love - the record is the band’s most ambitious and striking work yet. Where IDLES were once set on taking the world’s piss, squaring off with strong jaws against the perennially entitled, and exercising personal trauma in real time, they have arrived in this new act to offer the fruits of such perseverance: love, joy, and indeed gratitude for the mere opportunity of existence.

      A radical sense of defiant empowerment radiates from TANGK, co-produced by Nigel Godrich, Kenny Beats, and IDLES guitarist Mark Bowen. Despite his reputation as an incendiary post-punk sparkplug, frontman Joe Talbot sings almost all the feelings inside these 10 songs with hard-earned soul, offering each lusty vow or solidarity plea as a bona fide pop song—that is, a thing for everyone to pass around and share, communal anthems intended for overcoming our grievance.

      TANGK is a love album—open to anyone who requires something to shout out loud in order to fend off any encroaching sense of the void, now or forever.



      STAFF COMMENTS

      Barry says: Love them or hate them, the incendiary post-punk indebted offerings from Idles have rarely been less than wildly bombastic and this latest offering sees the Brighton pentet broaden their reach from the aforementioned fiery mayhem into gothic rock, minimal wave and electronic drone.

      TRACK LISTING

      1. IDEA 01
      2. Gift Horse
      3. POP POP POP
      4. Roy
      5. A Gospel
      6. Dancer
      7. Grace
      8. Hall & Oates
      9. Jungle
      10. Gratitude
      11. Monolith

      Idles

      Crawler

        Idles return with their new album “Crawler” – an album of reflection and healing amid a worldwide pandemic that stretched the planet’s collective mental and physical health to the breaking point.

        Frontman Joe Talbot says, “We want people who’ve gone through trauma, heartbreak, and loss to feel like they’re not alone, and also how it is possible to reclaim joy from those experiences.” IDLES albums have always been anchored by these overarching themes, but the ability of the band to juxtapose beauty and rage with humor and drama has never felt more satisfying than on “CRAWLER.”

        These stories are vividly brought to life through IDLES’ most soul-stirring music to date, recorded with co-producers Kenny Beats (Vince Staples, Freddie Gibbs) and IDLES guitarist Mark Bowen. There are, of course, numerous moments that will inspire absolute mayhem in a packed concert venue, but there are also fresh textures and experiments that push IDLES into thrilling new territory. “I don't really see us as a ‘rock band’ and working with Kenny [Beats] freed us of the idea of genre,” Talbot enthuses. “On this album, our dissolution of ego was helped by Kenny’s humble nature and willingness to learn. He has boundless passion for making the best song possible. Not the best ‘rock’ song — the best song possible.” He continues, “It was writing selfishly that helped make it possible. Reflecting. Telling my own story. Not trying to tell everyone else's story. Not trying to fix the world — just talking about how I am fixing mine.”

        TRACK LISTING

        MTT 420 RR
        The Wheel
        When The Lights Come On
        Car Crash
        The New Sensation
        Stockholm Syndrome
        The Beachland Ballroom
        Crawl!
        Meds
        Kelechi
        Progress
        Wizz
        King Snake
        The End

        Idles

        Model Village

          Following on from the release of Ultra Mono in 2020, IDLES are back to release a version of Model Village with none other than slowthai. In Joe's words: “We are fortunate to announce our forces have joined with the enigmatic and vibrant soul that is slowthai. Go dig.”

          TRACK LISTING

          A - Model Village
          F - Model Village Feat. Slowthai

          Following Brutalism (2017) and Joy as an Act of Resistance (2018), two releases that garnered global critical acclaim, 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. Not far beneath the surface of their self-admitted sloganeering lies a deeply complex and brutally relevant album that chews up clichés and spits them out as high art for the masses. This is momentary acceptance of the self. This is Ultra Mono.

          STAFF COMMENTS

          Darryl says: Including guest performances from David Yow, Jenny Beth, and Warren Ellis, their third album is an exhilarating punk tour-de-force. Bludgeoning drums, pummelling bass and searing guitars combine with wry social commentary for their most assured album to date.

          TRACK LISTING

          1. War
          2. Grounds
          3. Mr. Motivator
          4. Anxiety
          5. Kill Them With Kindness
          6. Model Village
          7. Ne Touche Pas Moi
          8. Carcinogenic
          9. Reigns
          10. The Lover
          11. A Hymn
          12. Danke

          IDLES

          A Beautiful Thing: IDLES Live At Le Bataclan

            ‘A Beautiful Thing: IDLES Live at Le Bataclan’ was recorded at Le Bataclan in Paris on 3rd December 2018, at the close of a 90 date world tour. The album celebrates the band’s success over the previouse two years, featuring songs from ‘Brutalism’ and ‘Joy as an Act of Resistance’, and highlights their overall message of unity, and of healing through community.

            “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


            STAFF COMMENTS

            Barry says: A beautiful thing indeed, Idles bring all of their vitriol and political fire to the legendary Bataclan, and it couldn't be more perfect a performance. Rawkous, huge and scathing, a live album not to be missed.

            TRACK LISTING

            VINYL TRACKLISTING:
            SIDE A
            1 Colossus (Live At Le Bataclan)
            2 Never Fight A Man With A Perm (Live At Le Bataclan)
            3 Mother (Live At Le Bataclan)
            4 Faith In The City (Live At Le Bataclan)
            5 I’m Scum (Live At Le Bataclan)

            SIDE B
            1 Danny Nedelko (Live At Le Bataclan)
            2 Divide & Conquer (Live At Le Bataclan)
            3 1049 Gotho (Live At Le Bataclan)
            4 Samaritans (Live At Le Bataclan)
            5 Television (Live At Le Bataclan)

            SIDE C
            1 Great (Live At Le Bataclan)
            2 Love Song (Live At Le Bataclan)
            3 White Privilege (Live At Le Bataclan)
            4 Gram Rock (Live At Le Bataclan)
            5 Benzocaine (Live At Le Bataclan)

            SIDE D
            1 Exeter (Live At Le Bataclan)
            2 Cry To Me (Live At Le Bataclan)
            3 Well Done (Live At Le Bataclan)
            4 Rottweiler (Live At Le Bataclan)

            CD TRACKLISTING:
            DISC 1
            1 Colossus (Live At Le Bataclan)
            2 Never Fight A Man With A Perm (Live At Le Bataclan)
            3 Mother (Live At Le Bataclan)
            4 Faith In The City (Live At Le Bataclan)
            5 I’m Scum (Live At Le Bataclan)
            6 Danny Nedelko (Live At Le Bataclan)
            7 Divide & Conquer (Live At Le Bataclan)
            8 1049 Gotho (Live At Le Bataclan)
            9 Samaritans (Live At Le Bataclan)
            10 Television (Live At Le Bataclan)

            DISC 2
            1 Great (Live At Le Bataclan)
            2 Love Song (Live At Le Bataclan)
            3 White Privilege (Live At Le Bataclan)
            4 Gram Rock (Live At Le Bataclan)
            5 Benzocaine (Live At Le Bataclan)
            6 Exeter (Live At Le Bataclan)
            7 Cry To Me (Live At Le Bataclan)
            8 Well Done (Live At Le Bataclan)
            9 Rottweiler (Live At Le Bataclan)

            Bristol, UK 5-piece Idles (aka “the UK's best punk band" - The Guardian) release their sophomore LP - ‘Joy as an Act of Resistance.’ 

            Produced by Space and mixed by Adam Greenspan & Nick Launay (Arcade Fire, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Kate Bush), ‘Joy as an Act of Resistance.’ takes aim at everything from toxic masculinity, nationalism, immigration, and class inequality - all while maintaining a visceral, infectious positivity. 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.”

            TRACK LISTING

            1. Colossus
            2. Never Fight A Man With A Perm
            3. I’m Scum
            4. Danny Nedelko
            5. Love Song
            6. June
            7. Samaritans
            8. Television
            9. Great
            10. Gram Rock
            11. Cry To Me
            12. Rottweiler

            Vital Idles

            Left Hand

              Debut album from Glasgow indie rock quartet that channel Kleenex and The Smiths, featuring members of Golden Grrrls (Slumberland / Night School). Following on from the band’s two cassettes of demos on Comfortable On A Tightrope and their sold out and well regarded 7”.

              “somewhere between the oblique minimalist pop of Flying Nun and early Rough Trade signings such as The Raincoats.' CLASH.

              Playing their first shows in Glasgow in 2015 during a summer that never threatened to show up, Vital Idles’ origins are closely tied with a tireless underground culture, a culture that informs the band’s refusal to take it easy. Matthew Walkerdine, Nick Lynch and Higgins are responsible for Glasgow DIY publishing institution Good Press - an independent volunteer-staffed zine and art book shop - while Guitarist Ruari MacLean’s pedigree stretches back to breakneck-indie-pop group Golden Grrrls and the Rose McDowall band.
              Following two self-released demos and a sold out debut 7”, Vital Idles arrive on Upset The Rhythm with ‘Left Hand’, a bare manifesto layered with meaning and non-meaning. The group can conceivably be called artists, or Artists, but in approaching their debut album Vital Idles have stripped away all extraneous ornamentation to sculpt an incredibly life-like, vibrant pop music completely détourned and re-thought.

              For a conglomerate of art outsiders and aesthetes, Vital Idles are primitive, whimsically brutal. Sculpting a skeleton from a body already lean, there’s a thrilling minimalism that runs through every beat and strum, a sparseness that feeds Jessica Higgins’s surreal, oblique vocal delivery all the nourishment it needs.

              Following practice room and bigger-budget recordings with Glasgow engineer Andy Monaghan, Vital Idles took complete control of their debut album, with Edwin Stevens (aka recording artist Irma Vep) providing an outside perspective on the hermetically sealed group’s music. Engineered by Stevens and MacLean, ‘Left Hand’ crackles with a raw, punk approach to writing warped pop songs that don’t just talk of disorder but often actively demonstrate it. At the heart of ‘Left Hand’, the beating pulse in the tool box, is a conflict never resolved. Higgins manages to create dialogues that she narrates both parts of, Dada-ist songs that seem obfuscated by layers of meaning that, when taken on their own terms as evocative mini-worlds, reveal themselves to be pieces that have an internal melancholy and logic. Like Gertrude Stein growing up on Dunedin pop groups, peel away the deliberate awkwardness and ‘Left Hand’ reveals itself to be a book of complex, literary short stories at pleasing odds with the wired, no-frills melodic thud MacLean, Lynch and Walkerdine serve.

              At times a perilous journey into the unknown and at others an immensely enjoyable foray into form deconstruction, lyricist Higgins repeatedly builds narratives out of mis-hearings, peons to doing things wrong, sideways-glances at conventional narrative. The delivery tightrope-walks between deadpan epithets and a Smiths-ian pop singing which gives many of the lyrics bite, pathos, and a surprising amount of surrealistic positivity. With Chains’ Troggs-ist chug stomping, Higgins flips the symbolism of the Chain into something to be tendered, cared for, is it a warped metaphor for the future, is a chain an aspiration? There’s an existential friction at the heart of Cave Raised that sees the narrator attempting escape, perhaps, unsure of themselves, “a poorly appointed project manager who says the best part is bowling around, which is a little like knocking around” that breaks into a melodic reprieve that feels like an unexpectedly romantic pay-off in the middle of “white space,” “Let’s tread the tides of time, to live it down, we’ll stretch these shores of mine to steal away.” Like many of Vital Idles songs, it can be read as a mini treatise on the song itself, or enjoyed as a visceral song that never does what you want it to.

              Like fellow Glaswegians Life Without Buildings, Vital Idles make the oblique sound essential. On Like Life, Higgins is at her most precarious with straight-up emotion; MacLean’s melodic bassline seems to duet with the vocal as it seems, for once, to be straightforwardly vulnerable. After telling us “I don’t really care but I could, I should” our narrator begs the listener “Don’t leave me at home with all the people I lost and all the things I forgot. For all the people I lost, I care.” Whether it’s a slip of the artist’s mask of distance or a deliberate trick to fool us into caring, we care. It’s indicative of the tension in Vital Idles: pop songs unwilling to bend to convention, chart hits in the alternative timeline where Messthetics compilations are Now That's What I Call Music, endlessly inventive linguistics that reveal emotional depth, a dry, punk minimalism able to turn on a dime into a mouldy, witty kitchen sink story narrated by Samuel Beckett. It’s a tension that threatens to fall apart into dissonance or resolve into sweetness but thankfully does neither, rather it keeps Vital Idles moving forward, never standing still, never taking it easy.


              TRACK LISTING

              SIDE A
              01. A Premise
              02. Solid States
              03. Chains
              04. Fall Into Shape
              05. Waxes Colder
              06. Carve A Bat
              07. Cave Raised

              SIDE B
              08. Blue, Black & White
              09. Time Free
              10. Rising Damp
              11. Geraniums
              12. Like Life
              13. Now & Again
              14. The Scenery

              Bristol’s finest post-punk polemics IDLES have been promising to do great things for some time now, and with their debut album “Brutalism” they absolutely fulfil that promise, and a furious promise at that. Politically charged, refreshingly confrontational and infectiously volatile, IDLES are a band like no other. Bringing the unsettling reality of the world we live in into their frantic assault on the senses, they are a band that until now could only be truly understood by witnessing in a live environment - but with “Brutalism” it surely feels like they have captured the intensity of that live sound.

              Bottled up here are the abrasive, memorable lyrics of Joseph Talbot delivered with all of the spite and wry humour he puts across on the stage .Dedicated in part to the loss of his mother, who adorns the record’s cover, and partly to a perceived decimation of society, from the NHS to public services across Britain, “Brutalism” is a deadly serious indictment on popular culture. 

              “Idles are one of the most exciting British bands right now and Brutalism is the proof”-The Line Of Best Fit

              ”Visceral anthems that’s timed weirdly well for this year’s madness“ NME

              STAFF COMMENTS

              Barry says: Snarling, pretence-free modern post-punk perfection from Bristol's very own Idles. From the slamming power-chord mayhem of “Well Done”, laying into Tarquin and his love of reggae and football, to the throbbing hook-laden 'Rachel Khoo', this is an unrelenting but perfectly formed juxtaposition of melodic sensibility and brazen, all-out aural warfare. Killer.

              TRACK LISTING

              1.Heel / Heal.
              2.Well Done.
              3. Mother.
              4. Date Night.
              5. Faith In The City.
              6.1049 Gotho.
              7.Divide & Conquer.
              8. Rachel Khoo.
              9. Stendhal Syndrome.
              10. Exeter.
              11.Benzocaine
              12.White Privilege
              13.Slow Savage


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