Idles – Tangk

It’s seven years since Idles burst into wider consciousness with Brutalism, a debut album that somewhat captured the zeitgeist.

2017 of course was the summer of “Oh, Jeremy Corbyn”. The emergence of a band of furious left-wing punks from trendy Bristol was almost too perfect in fitting a stereotype of a cultural and political moment. One that once saw the Manic Street Preachers fret that university-educated anger was being misdirected into asking the working class “to make lovespoons out of hemp”.

The best part of a decade later, Idles and frontman Joe Talbot have every reason to be even angrier. The revolution promised from a Glastonbury stage never happened. Britain is arguably more broken than ever, with the Tories going through Prime Ministers at a similar rate to that which the hardworking Idles have released albums.

Yet Tangk, their latest record, is not another diatribe – and that’s a good thing. Cementing a shift that began on its predecessor, Crawler, the outward rage has been replaced by pathos and lament.

Guided by Nigel Godrich – of Radiohead fame – who co-produced the album alongside Kenny Beats and Idles’s own Mark Bowen, it opens with Idea 01, and its drifting, dreamy piano lines.

Gift Horse showcases their old fire with a killer driving riff, while one can hear Godrich’s influence on Pop Pop Pop, with its echoes of Radiohead’s shift to more abstract electronica at the turn of the Millenium. The next track, Roy, foregrounds the rhythm section of Adam Devonshire, John Beavis and Lee Kiernan alongside Talbot’s crooning and a hint of Tarantino-like Americana.

There then follows the record’s brooding centrepiece and biggest departure: the touching piano rumination,  A Gospel. It’s a beautiful track that illustrates the album’s themes of love and sadness. Dancer, a single which follows it, perhaps serves as the best bridge between Idles’s rough and ready past and more sophisticated present. As does another standout track, Jungle, where Talbot’s voice takes on a pleading, anthemic quality also present on the earlier Grace.

By the time Tangk reaches its experimental conclusion with Monolith – a dreamy piece of distorted jazzy electronica – it’s clear that Idles are a very different group to the one whose punk tirades were lapped up back in 2017.

It’s a record that shows why this is to be applauded, even as there’s still as much to rage against, as in Tangk they’ve made a more fascinating, human record than by repeating themselves – whatever your views on lovespoons.

Mark Worgan
Image: Tom Ham

Tangk is released on 16^th February 2024. For further information or to order the album visit Idles’s website here.

Watch the video for the single Dancer here: