The New Cue #353 January 29: Joe Talbot of IDLES
"It was like in Rocky III when he loses to Clubber Lang and has to go back to the streets."
Good morning!
We hope you had a cracking weekend and that you all enjoyed Friday’s normally-for-subscribers-only edition that we accidentally gifted to everyone. Let’s start the week in conversation with IDLES frontman Joe Talbot about his band’s ace new album Tangk and never mention Friday again (until this Friday, when our subscribers-only Recommender edition arrives).
Enjoy your week,
Ted, Niall and Chris
Start The Week With… IDLES
On their first three albums, Bristol’s IDLES largely hurled their fiery post-punk Molotov cocktails at the ogres of Tory-run Britain – Brexit, bigots, unemployment, a decimated care and social system among them. Following the stark, personal blood-letting of 2021’s Crawler, which detailed frontman Joe Talbot’s past struggles with addiction over a more experimental musical backdrop, IDLES’ latest album finds them still fighting the good fight, only this time they’re throwing love bombs rather than more overtly political incendiaries. Out next month and produced by Nigel Godrich and Kenny Beats, Tangk continues to rework the band’s blueprint, while shifting its lyrical focus towards a simpler message of love and hope. Joe Talbot jumped on a Zoom call with Chris just before Christmas to talk all about the new-look fitter, happier, more productive IDLES…
Hi Joe.
Hi, how are you?
I’m jealous of your hat, I’m freezing.
I didn’t have the heating on for a week, so I’ve been wearing this. It’s great.
What have you been up to today?
I had my daughter’s Christmas play this morning.
Oh nice, what was her role?
She was a sheep. She smashed it.
It’s been just over two years since the last IDLES album came out, does it feel longer to you?
Crawler feels like a long, long time ago. I’ve toured the world since then. My kid’s started school. I’ve completely transitioned into a more lucid and comfortable version of myself. A lot fitter and stronger. Mentally aware. I’m happy.
Can you hear that back when you listen to Tangk?
Yeah, definitely. All my records are very intimate. My records in the sense of what I put into them. Obviously it’s a band effort, but in terms of what I put into those records, I can hear what I was going through at that time and this one was a hugely transitional period in my life where I finally started to heal, because Crawler and the pandemic gave me the time and grace to be able to start properly. I feel good. I’m ready. I’m happy and I’m excited about our potential. It’s a good place to be.
It felt on [third album] Ultra Mono that you were being as ‘IDLES’ as you possibly could, like you were pushing it past its logical conclusion. Was it a conscious decision to do that and then move on?
That’s exactly what we were doing. It was putting up an effigy of a bloated and grotesque version of what everyone told us we were and then we burnt it to the ground. We could enjoy that fire and then move on. It was a beautiful thing.
Lyrically, Crawler was much more about you personally. Did the process of writing Crawler and how you approached it unlock something in you, or open up a new avenue when it came to writing this record?
Definitely. Also, we had the time and the space to do it. The pandemic gave us a lot of hours. So in between when I was not being a father, I was working on myself, fixing and moving forward. When you do that, it’s a very lucid and vibrant time as an artist. I had an opportunity and I took it. I’m very grateful for that. I basically fucking went for it and now I won’t look back. I’ll keep going forward and keep changing and keep transgressing until I die, or my career dies.
How did Tangk come together in terms of the band making it?
It was similar to Crawler in that we’d learned that we could write remotely and we didn’t all have to be in the room together. We weren’t obsessed with the idea of being a live band and all that stuff. We’d been forced into writing remotely so we thought let’s keep going with that. [Guitarist, Mark] Bowen and I would write remotely and then come into Nigel Godrich’s studio in London, but not bring in too much, and we spent three days a week for however many months writing in his studio. Which was very uncomfortable for me and I made that very uncomfortable for them. Because when I’m in a bad way, I’m the black cloud in the room and I’m fucking unpleasant to be around. I didn’t want to be and I was aware of it and I had a few episodes where I was really down about it because I didn’t want to be that black cloud, but I changed it. I sorted my shit out and took accountability and looked at what the problem was and fixed it.
But before that it was tough. We still wrote stuff. I think working with your heroes, as in Nigel Godrich, you come at the situation with self-doubt. Not because of his behaviour, but I had self-doubt going into it. Bowen’s a lot more dynamic than I am and he feels a lot more comfortable in a situation where he’s writing in a new environment with lots of new toys and lots of new instruments. I just need a kick and a snare and everyone else to shut the fuck up. But it was great and very fruitful. We learned way more than we’ve ever learned before. Because with Crawler we realised our potential. Potential means a capacity to learn and work hard. If you have the capacity to learn and work hard and you do it something beautiful will come. Even if it’s acceptance that you can’t fucking do it. You might think you can fight Mike Tyson and then you get in the ring and you realise you can’t.
You dug into your own trauma on Crawler which was quite dark and cathartic. Did you have the idea that you wanted Tangk to go the other way and be full of positivity?
Yeah, I always come at each album with a theme before it’s started. This one didn’t come as easily but then I realised I was overthinking it. Because I was working with Kenny Beats and Nigel Godrich, I felt for some reason that I needed to change my approach, but then it was like, ‘What am I doing?’ It was like in Rocky III when he loses to Clubber Lang so he has to go back to the streets to realise he needs the eye of the tiger. I realised that I was over complicating things and doubting myself because I was in the room with people that inspired me. When I got over that, I flourished.
There’s a lot of love songs on the album.
I always want to write love songs, I’ve always written love songs, they are all love songs, every song I’ve ever written is a love song. It’s the tone and the musical accomplishment that is changing. I was like, ‘I’m just gonna write love songs, the lyrics will write themselves because the music will be so fucking potent that I can shit out love songs because that’s all I have’. I’m full of love. I’m very expressive with that. You ask anyone that’s around me they will tell you that I’m a very loving man. I’m full of love and I’m full of energy. I can write about love all day, every day. It’s not something that’s hard for me. I just needed the right landscape to do it on.
Do you think that’s something that’s sometimes overlooked with IDLES. People might think it’s angry or political, but actually it’s about love, compassion and community?
Yeah. Our incentive when we started the band was to have a connection with people and make something magic happen, which is human connection. I was fucking terrified and alone when I started the band. I made that band happen so that I could feel like I was connected to something much greater than myself. We’ve always carried that forward. Some people misunderstand that and that’s okay, that’s what art is. The testament to that is the community that we’ve built, the community that’s been built by them for us, and by us for them, around the music. People know it when they see us live and when they meet us as human beings that we are the real deal. That is political because there is a structure above us that doesn’t want that to happen. I’ve always said that we’re not a political band. I’m not an activist, I just have opinions and it’s going to come out in my art because I’m an artist. I want to make change on a human level. And I have, and I feel great.
Do you think music can change things socially?
I think it can give people the incentive for empathy and love and compassion. Because universally, music is a language that everyone understands. Everyone understands music, rhythm and dance. That connects people. If you come at the world with love and empathy then my opinion is that you will make decisions that lean towards left-wing politics. Brexit is a loveless choice. The Conservative government is a loveless choice. In terms of love as a verb, to love is to produce something to make connections and allow someone else to flourish spiritually. It’s not the selfish act of Brexit or voting for the Tories or allowing the genocide in Gaza to happen. In my opinion, if you come at the world with love and empathy then the political landscape that I hope for will happen. Music can only go so far. If I really truly wanted to make a political difference, I’d be a politician, but I go out into the world with love and empathy and grace and I think that I’ve made a difference.
In the current climate, a song like Danny Nedelko [from 2018’s Joy As An Act Of Resistance] about celebrating immigrants feels even more urgent and important.
Yeah, absolutely. Those songs that I’ve written that were, so to speak political, were still about the human condition and wanting to connect with people with love and empathy. They do seem more urgent now because the world is more panicked and more scared and more financially unstable. The rich are richer, the poor are poorer. So any music that is about connecting and building a community around difference and compassion is going to seem more left-wing or more radical.
Do you feel you have a home politically?
No. But I know who I’m gonna vote for. I’m going to vote for whoever in my constituency will stop the Tories getting in. That’s all I’ll vote for. Moving forward, that’s a start. A centralist, capitalist party who are not doing anything to stop the genocide in Gaza… but I will vote for them because it’s the lesser of two evils. And we move on from that. It’s like, I marched against the Iraq war but I voted for the man I was marching against. That’s the boat I’ve been in since I was a student. Since I could vote I’ve been begging for the lesser of two evils. As a parent, you realise if something needs to change and progress and you come at it all guns blazing you’re not gonna change a fucking thing. That little person that you want to help progress and change, if you go in with the discipline of empathy and kindness, you’re way more likely to get the result you and they need.
Has becoming a father changed your attitude to how you approach everything? Not just how you approach the world, but how you approach your music, touring, your body, your mind…
Yes. It’s imperative that I stay sober now. I haven’t done drugs for a very long time now, but it’s an accountability and a responsibility. That is a gift. And a joy. It’s a privilege. I get to tell the world with my mates, that’s a responsibility and a huge gift. Having a child is a huge responsibility and a huge gift. So those two things manifest in one thing, which is gratitude. And I show that by working on it. As long as I can keep her safe and strong, I’m happy.
When it came to tearing down this idea of IDLES, were you worried that you might lose the essence of the band for the people coming to see you?
That’s the thing with longevity. If you think of it as a retrospective, [US painter] Robert Rauschenberg’s retrospective at The Tate would be a good example, or Picasso for the hoi polloi! The idea is that over time if you as an audience allow an artist to transgress and push themselves forward and change over time, you see that journey and you see that progress. But with the brilliant artists, you always see them. That essence of what it is that is them. You can go and see some fucking bloke who’s painted a big blue bob on a canvas but you can tell if it’s a Rothko or not. Over time, our shows will be a retrospective of all of our work. As long as we stay true, we will be brilliant. It’s like any loving relationship. If the person loves you for who they want you to be, then you’re in a toxic relationship. If they love you because of who you are and you love them for who they are then it’s a loving relationship. That’s what true love it. If you live your life to please someone else because if you don’t then they will leave you, that’s not a way to live so why make art like that?
That’s a very good analogy. Thanks for talking to us, Joe.
Thank you. Take care.
CC