“Are you ready to collide?” echoed around Queen Square in Bristol twice, and twice 15,000 bodies answered the barked question in the emphatic affirmative. IDLES were back in town, making their only UK gigs of the year into full-scale block parties across the first Friday and Saturday in August for an exquisite homecoming.
The band are absolute catnip to their fans and, with the crowd a patchwork quilt of IDLES t-shirts through the ages, the boys (with Dev back on bass and Colin Webster wielding the baritone saxophone) knuckled down to make the most of two 105-minute sets, digging deep into their surprisingly expansive back catalogue. Both nights opened with a spine-tingling tear through ‘Colossus’ and closed with a triple-threat of ‘Dancer’, ‘Danny Nedelko’ and ‘Rottweiler’, but even where the songs were the same the experience was wonderfully different.
Friday night’s ‘Rottweiler’ featured young Aiden from Derry on guitar, brought on stage to fulfil a dream written on a sign held in the front row; Saturday’s rendition barely counted, as an extended ‘Danny Nedelko’ overran after descending into delicious chaos with the man himself brought on stage then carried by the crowd far beyond the sound desk.
Torn between angst and introspection Joe Talbot supplied anecdotes and memories about songs written in pubs around the corner, not always by him but, as ‘1049 Gotho’, by “the people that saved my life”. ‘The Wheel’ was alternately dedicated to his father and his mother, the gratitude at being able to play them on such a stage palpable and heartbreaking. It’s a strange thing, how IDLES manage to be so raw and yet so entertaining, allowing space for positivity and celebration even while delivering vital messages of solidarity with Palestine and unfiltered venom towards the Tories. It was an even worse weekend than usual to be anti-woke in Bristol.
Around a third of the set was unique to each night, and it’s hard to pick a winner – Friday got ‘Beachland Ballroom’, one of the most emotional cuts of the weekend, but Saturday’s bludgeoning ‘Exeter’ gave it a run for its money in a totally different way as the stage was flooded with fans from the pit. All five albums were represented, with the sharp edges of 2017’s Brutalism dovetailing nicely with their more recent post-post-punk synth work on songs like ‘Car Crash’ from last year’s Tangk.
There was no suggestion of IDLES being upstaged by a support band, but they were certainly not going it alone, sitting atop two impressive lineups. Soft Play on the Friday were a massive hit, somehow sharing a bill with IDLES for the first time and determined to make the most of it. Julian Casablancas’ experimental rock project The Voidz on the Saturday were a miss, though, somehow sticking out as a strange inclusion on a wilfully varied lineup which also included Bristol dubstep queen Sicaria and bludgeoning techno-rockers SCALER.
But in truth, these shows were all about IDLES even though they would recoil from the very suggestion. It was unity writ large in an increasingly ununified world and a privilege to be a part of. Although ‘Grace’ didn’t make it into either setlist the message was clearer than ever – love is the fing.
Words: Joe Ponting
IDLES official
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