Q&a / ‘Burn it down, kill it and move on’: Idles on how new album Tangk goes beyond ‘angry’ post-punk politics, and working with Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich and LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy
- Idles are redefining its rowdy, preachy reputation with love-filled 5th album Tangk – Style spoke exclusively to frontman Joe Talbot about British politics, ‘faking’ his class … and King Charles
- Guitarist Mark Bowen talks working with LCD on ‘Dancer’ and sharing co-production credits with Nigel Godrich – who helped Beck, Here We Go Magic and Radiohead through similar sonic reinventions
Idles are at a crossroads. Arguably the last noteworthy guitar band to emerge in the 2010s, the British post-punks became fast festival favourites – thanks to the retro cross-cut guitar assault, soapbox-worthy choruses and inclusive megaphone-messaging of politics big and small, found on dynamite debut LP Brutalism (2017) and even better follow-up Joy as an Act of Resistance (2018).
But after two pandemic-era attempts to slay the beast they created – via the deliberately “grotesque” caricature Ultra Mono (2020) and the sonically ambitious Crawler (2021) – the British quintet are dismantling and discarding that incendiary image for good with fifth outing Tangk. It is an album “of gratitude of love” and has the potential to redefine Idles as a serious artistic force for decades to come. So it’s definitely a crossroads – not a cul-de-sac.
