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I shouldn’t have gone on that tour, because something much worse could have happened. I should have stayed at home and fixed with my girlfriend.”

— Never fight a man with a perm —

Later, Lee, Dev and Jon are sat on a grassy bank before having to go to work that evening (Lee works at a music college, Dev at a venue). I ask how they first reacted when Joe brought in such sensitive lyrics to the rehearsal space for the first time. “I laughed,” says Lee, although clearly not in a harsh way, but in reaction to the astonishing rawness of it. “It was just like ‘fucking hell mate!’ It’s a simple fact that we’re just all really good friends. No matter what happens we’re there for each other.”

That loss doesn’t define the album, but it is one of the subjects that revolve around the master theme of vulnerability. Knowing their past and present experiences it makes sense that all the strands of IDLES feed into that. When Joe shouts from the stage, like he often does, about how he loves the NHS it’s because he and his family have benefited from its care. He’s compelled to write songs that skewer “bullshit” macismo behaviour (‘Colossos’, ‘Never Fight A Man With A Perm’, ‘Samaritans’, ‘Cry To Me’) because without embracing his emotions he might not be here right now. “What it is to be a man needs to be crushed. A new way of being needs to come out of it,” he says. “There’s probably a horrendous amount of men who’ve killed themselves because of the phrase ‘man up’ or because of the phrase ‘don’t cry.’” He also just “fucking loves” immigrants (‘Danny Nedelko’), is just as exhausted by Brexit as everyone else but wants to move forward (‘Great’) and hates The Sun (‘Rottweiler’). On this new album he’s also written his first love song, called ‘Love Song’. “I’d never written a love song, which I thought was a bit of a shame. I love her so much. She’s hard work and I am hard work. Staying together through our illnesses, I think that’s something to celebrate.”

So, there’s a lot of hurt in ‘Joy As An Act Of Resistance’. The type of strife that can destroy people. But ruling over that is defiance. It’s an album that rejects a stiff upper lip attitude; an album that says weep if you need to weep, laugh when you want to laugh. Together IDLES are still working through some dark times, but their sustained promise is to be truthful with each other. And if they look like they’re having a ball on stage, or when they’re messing about in their tour van in their Instagram videos, or kissing each other in photos, it’s because they are. There’s a lot of joy.

During a day where we talk about some weighty subjects there’s a lot of laughs. Lee tells a story about their show at the O2 Arena with Foo Fighters where he met drummer Taylor Hawkins. “Somehow we talked about how important a morning poo is – it was talking about poo for five minutes then he was off. That was my only interaction with him. I’ll remember it forever.” At one point, during a particularly serious section of our conversation, I leave the table to pay for some drinks. A week later I discover a secret message on my recorder: Bowen makes spooky ghost noises, before Joe puts on a menacing voice: “This is a secret message to you. If you write a bad word about us, we’re going to kill ya. We’ll come round your house and break your legs. Oops…. you’re coming back!”

After our conversation in the cafe the band walk up a steep road nearby and pose for photos with the early evening Bristol skyline in the background. Joe’s partner arrives having finished work for the day at the local hospital where she’s a nurse and he puts a tender arm around her shoulders before everyone goes their separate ways.

“What we didn’t want to do is be a happy-go-lucky band that doesn’t have any content,” he says before he leaves. “We want it to be a real force of change and violence but with joy as the engine instead of negative energy. We’re trying to change a narrative, to help people out with our art – ourselves included. This band is a selfish act as well as a selfless act. The whole point of this is that when you have a platform for art you can make a change. That’s what all good artists do, that’s how it works. It’ll be a lot more rewarding in the end, but we’ll probably look like Chris Martin while we’re doing it. But, you know what? Fuck ‘em.”