Idles - Tangk Review
Give TANGK a chance — Freudenfreude for IDLES.
IDLES are back with their fifth album, TANGK, which has caused concern among some fans — one Reddit user stating, “Don’t Coldplay my IDLES”. Do they have a point, possibly? Long-term Radiohead collaborator Nigel Godrich produces the album, and it does seem like it is a conscious pivot away from their earlier sound — more love, less anger. Particularly concerning for that Reddit user, the band sought out Chris Martin’s permission to digitally alter Coldplay’s video for Yellow for their video for the song Grace, the second single off the album. But what of the band’s desire to be accepted into the warm arms of Chris Martin? Does it signal the end of the band as we know it? Are they now going to be catapulted into the safety of mega-stardom, leaving us plebs behind on the beer and pissed-soaked pub floors? British bands of recent yore post Brit-pop like Coldplay and the Arctic Monkeys, for instance, have had pop culture moments that changed everything for them — Glastonbury in 2002 for CP and the opening ceremony for the 2012 Olympics for AM. This hasn’t yet happened for IDLES — possibly because the pandemic ruined the slowest meteoric rise in music history (they formed in 2009!) and left them slightly outside of the mainstream — a band still looking for their moment. They rose on the tide of post-Brexit disquietude. They delved into the divide in Britain on songs like New Model Village (interestingly, a song they don’t play anymore). They got some beef with The Fat White Family, lucidly analysed by Nathalie Olah in The Guardian. They were an angry band. Seeds of the new direction started to sprout on CRAWLER, an album that could still rip your face off, their modus operandi at the start. TANGK meanders through old and new soundscapes that, on initial listen, might leave you confused as the Reddit user from above, and maybe has more in common with their debut EP, Welcome, than any of their later work, but don’t let this fool you. Yes, pound for pound, this album is slower than previous albums — IDEA 01, A Gospel, Grace and the beautiful closer Monolith leading the charge and it takes a moment to get used to Talbot singing more than usual. Don’t worry; the violence is still there on songs like Gift Horse, Jungle, Gratitude, Hall and Oates and even the LCD Soundsystem collaboration, Dancer — a song I’m sure will be a live classic very soon.
IDLES are from Bristol, not London or Manchester; their post-punk is different. They have been wielding that angry energy that simmers and sweats under the Bristol mud, but something else oozes out of the River Avon, a brooding fog, a city that gave us Trip-hop and Portishead. Frontman Joe Talbot, at times, feels like he’s Antony Keidis cosplaying an angry man in a west country pub — the fact that he hadn’t written any of the lyrics to the album before recording not helping this — but so what, he is a man wearing his heart on his sleeve, swiping at the night with fiery paintbrushes uniting the musical polarities of Bristol. And the man has a knack for a lyric, the opening lyrics to Gift Horse being some of my favourites in recent memory. IDLES are more than just Talbot, though. Adam Devonshire on bass and Jon Beavis are a driving rhythm section, and the lyrics further into Gift Horse, “Cause he moves like a generator, he puts the foot down and see you later,” could be applied to their driving industrial sound. Then there’s Mark Bowen on lead guitar and Lee Kiernan on rhythm guitar, who provide the atmospheric nuance — their Sergio Leone guitars on Dancer — and give the band’s music the soaring catharsis that is apparent in a song like Grace.
I’m writing a strongly worded email if they’re not announced as one of Glastonbury’s Pyramid stage closers for 2024. Come on, give them their moment. They’re ready.