Tuesday, October 22, 2019

The Heaviest Feel-Good Music: IDLES


Image result for idlesIDLES is an English rock band out of Bristol that formed in 2009, having released two albums in the past two years: Brutalism (2017) and Joy as an Act of Resistance (2019). Some have classified them under post-punk or post-hardcore for their heavy, loud, and grimy style but singer Joe Talbot went on record to say, "for the last time, we're not a fucking punk band.” Talbot’s vocals vary from a gravelly yell to a dark croon with their many tracks that diverge from the noisy brutality that often characterizes other bands of similar style. Brutalism’s angrier and nihilistic themes were succeeded by Joy as an Act of Resistance which featured a much wider musical variety and a mindful commentary of toxic masculinity, self-love, and immigration in Britain.
The themes of toxic masculinity and self-love are thick within Joy which diverges from the common masculine aggression and self-deprecating flavor of punk or hardcore rock. A song like “Television” centers around rejecting commercial media’s description of beauty because those “bastards made you / not want to look like you” and that freedom is to “smash mirrors and fuck TV”.  In “Never fight a Man with a Perm”, IDLES essentially calls out fashion obsessed gym bros for being hyper-aggressive “walking thyroids”, “a catalog”, and “a Topshop tyrant”, but the song closes with Talbot saying “I shut my mouth/ let’s hug it out.” Even though these men will abuse others around them for an illusion of physical perfection, they offer a sensitive reconciliation consistent with the album’s message of self-love and self-acceptance. These songs are all noisy and grungy but not to the effect of being angry; they serve the intensity of a very mindful and loving message not often found in the genre.



Regarding the political themes of Joy, “Danny Nedelko” stands as the album’s pro-immigrant anthem named after Talbot’s friend, a Ukrainian immigrant and leader of the band Heavy Lungs. The song is IDLES’ most popular song and centers immigrant acceptance around recognizing the beauty in others and that everyone deserves to be loved. The fantastic pre-chorus in the song reads: “He’s made of flesh, he’s made of love. He’s made of you, he’s made of me. Unity!” The emotion is tangible in the track where its energy is not rooted in anger or frustration, but it is a battle cry for love and acceptance.


When asked by an interviewer when he first realized he did not like his body, Talbot responded, saying “eleven” and elaborated, “because what I saw on TV and in magazines wasn't what I saw in the mirror.” Self-image and self-care issues had been with Talbot since a very young age due to having clubfeet and eventually balding as a young adult. Having pinpointed those insecurities, he has been able to draw a message from them. On how the managed a second album so quickly after their first, Talbot said, “it felt as if the shoe suddenly fits. So we didn’t want to stop because we had so many more ideas,” and he later remarked “After Brutalism came the progress … I think we genuinely started enjoying our own skin and each other’s.” After their first album, the motivation behind IDLES became rooted in the passion of honest expression, and they no longer were scrambling to piece together an album. This intrinsic need for honesty with himself and his bandmates has lead them down an artistic path to focus on love and acceptance of the self and others. Studies done by Amabile and others have shown that intrinsic motivation – in which money, career, or social gain are the end goal – are a key characteristic of creative persons since pure passion can drive a person to work long hours on a product uninfluenced by external expectations. Coupled with unique societal experience, Joe Talbot and IDLES have found a deep-seated emotional drive for their creative process that allows them to express a genuine message in their acclaimed music that diverges from the norm of their genre. Joe Talbot is a pro-creative and the IDLES album Joy as an Act of Resistance stands as the band’s greatest work so far.

Cite:
http://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/diy-magazine//diy/Artists/I/IDLES/DIY-77/IDLES-DIY-77-Pooneh-Ghana-50005-web_180730_173917.jpg 

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