Whether they’ve wanted it or not, antagonism has dogged IDLES for most of their career. The Bristol band started off as the instigators, going after everything from the Tories to toxic masculinity, before being pushed towards the back foot at the hands of a rabid media, a strangely militant haterbase and, let’s face it, an underwhelming third album (the now all-but-disowned Ultra Mono).
The fightback started with 2021’s Grammy-nominated and soul-bearing Crawler and the band have doubled down on pushing their envelope still further on Tangk. The fact that opener ‘Idea 01’ was the first idea for the album tells you everything you need to know about the band’s approach –polyphonic piano lines and gentle vocals show there was never any intention to go back to the post-punk cacophony that founded the IDLES empire.
That said, ‘Gift Horse’ crashes back the years – in a different life it would have kicked the album off, an undoubtedly refined version of ‘classic’ IDLES (a category becoming increasingly hard to actually define), which marries throaty roars of “look at him gooooo” with more experimental guitar tones and effects best appreciated with headphones.
With iconic producer Nigel Godrich brought on board alongside Kenny Beats and Mark Bowen – who enthusiastically continues his double life playing guitar on one side of the glass and twiddling knobs on the other – and experimentation the name of the game, it is terribly hard not to make comparisons between Tangk and the fourth album from a band led by a certain Mr Yorke. ‘POP POP POP’, with heavy effects on even the drums and a glitching vocal outro, epitomises this move, but that’s quite enough of that for now.
As the record progresses it becomes more and more apparent that IDLES are doing this for nobody but themselves. ‘A Gospel’ might once have been an interlude but is now given room to breathe and evolve, while ‘Hall & Oates’ gives more than a knowing wink to LCD Soundsystem (two of whom pop up with vocals on ‘Dancer’) bristling with Brutalism-era guitars and delivery.
Joe Talbot’s vocals have never sounded so good and so varied, never better than on ‘Roy’ with its appealingly naïve arpeggios and theatrically squalling chorus, and his lyricism is also particularly strong. The chorus on penultimate song ‘Gratitude’ urgently, desperately affirms that “That gratitude cuts through my veins”, a line which neatly sums Tangk up – it’s minor-key catharsis not a shallow giving of thanks, and once you’ve bought into it it’s terribly hard to tear yourself away.
Words - Joe Ponting
IDLES official
