IDLES 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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