Idles in Issue Seventeen

It’s about time So Young got around to speaking to Idles. In a sense though we’ve chosen a very good moment. The band have just announced that their new record ‘Joy’ is on it’s way later this year and have dropped the devious and overwhelming first single ‘Colossus’. Anyhow, Joe Talbot bluntly puts it, “We’re glad you jumped on our fucking bandwagon because we love the magazine.” Calling Joe an interesting speaker is a massive understatement, so we didn’t ask him all the obvious questions about their whirlwind last few years, what it was like meeting Dave Grohl and all the rest because that’s a story which has already been written. Instead, we got stuck into the future and where the hell this titanic band are headed for next. (I can assure you it’s not an iceberg).

Q: Your transition into Partisan seems to have been amazing, tell us about the move?

A: It kind of happened rather quickly really. We were looking for a label for quite a while to give us the platform we needed and nobody came about so we cracked on on our own. Then we had Partisan approach us and by that point I was like, we don’t need a fucking label, what’s all this bullshit. So I was a bit apprehensive about the whole thing, I wasn’t bitter or anything but I was just self-aware enough to know that we were doing fine on our own. I didn’t want to sacrifice all our hard work by signing with someone who just wants to jump on our backs at a time when we’re finally doing alright for ourselves.

Q: Obviously their values hit home with you then?

A: It all just changed really quickly when I spoke to Tim Putney who’s head of the label. He just blew my mind. He called me super late because he’s in New York and we just ended up talking for two hours. He was fascinating and very passionate. Every conversation I’ve had with him since has been as inspiring and magical. It’s basically given us a morale boost in the sense that they were speaking our language. They were reading our art, listening to our music and getting it. They said, we understand your messages and want to help you translate that outside of the UK to the rest of the world. Everyone we’ve met in the label has been earnest, hard-working and interested, that’s what we’re about. It’s just felt like we’re part of the family and I’m more than happy to welcome them into our family as well. It’s been a very quick thing because we had the second album set in terms of artwork, themes and songs. We had a couple of hurdles along the way but we got through them. It’s all a bit of a blur but now we’re on the other side with an album in our hands. It’s a beautiful thing.

Q: One thing they seem to have offered is the stepping stone into America…

A: Yeah weirdly it was never in my periphery vision to go to America and try and do it over there. I was worried about my tone of approach which I thought was very Britaincentric. There’s an air of unease and political confusion in our country and I didn’t realise it was so apparent over there as well. There’s a need for honesty in music and popular culture as much as there is here. There was a lot of hungry crowds and a lot of warm receptions and intelligent people. We met so many wonderful characters out there that made us feel like we were at home. The show in Brooklyn was like doing a show in Bristol. That goes across the board, our music has a tone of visceral energy that is an amalgamation of honesty and hard work. I think there’s a gap in popular culture in America and Europe for that. I think people are bored of pretension. In a time where there’s no believable meta-narratives knocking about, people seek honest fat old men who are shouting about stuff that’s interesting because the world around them is not perfect.

Q: How did you approach the second album then?

A: There was a pressure at the start. There was quite a few songs we scrapped because I reflected on the lyrics. I realised I’d fallen into the trap that I was in before the first album, which is where you’re just writing shit to please other people. When people respond to your music, you’ve got more of a gauge: what they like and don’t. I became too self-aware and was thinking about what I was writing too much. So I went back to square one and unlearnt what I’d learnt from the first album. My approach was to be as naive as possible and it worked. The songs came thick and fast and it was a lot easier to write than I thought it would be. The thematics came very quickly because my daughter died so I wanted to build on that as I did with the first album. I’ve always stuck to my ethos of being as transparent as possible with my lyrics. Obviously it was a lot harder than the first album because it was a lot harder to deal with anyway. It was a point in my life where I realised I could either go back to addiction and destruction or I can change my life around forever because of something catastrophic. So it all came in at the same time and the album just came very quickly.

Q: So it’s about channeling that grief into the right places?

A: It’s all about reflective grieving where you use the trainwreck that you’re in to a pragmatic gain where you utilise the people around you who care for you. You share your feelings and build slowly as opposed to quickly. The first album was very explosive grief that happened. This time around I couldn’t rush it because I knew if I rushed my grieving process I’d be in danger of imploding and turning into a violent monster. So I took things slowly and spoke about my feelings a lot more than I was comfortable with. I had to be vulnerable to the people I cared about and to the songs. The songwriting process was a lot more bruising but a lot more freeing afterwards. The lyrics are very simplistic and childlike in a way and I wanted there to be an innocence to it. That shows you can be strong and vulnerable at the same time. The whole album is based around that period really. All my lyrics will be based on what I’m going through at that point. I’m sure it will change when I start writing long ballads that nobody wants to listen to.

Q: You’ve had such a turbulent time with life and an exciting time with the band - how important have the band been in coping?

A: They’ve been paramount really. I spend a lot of time with them. They’ve been very patient and they’ve been a good ear and shoulder to cry on. They’ve worked really hard for this tour and this album and everything that’s around us. They’ve stuck their necks out and worked their asses off. They’ve evolved with me to be slightly more soft around the edges so that I can lean on them. I think beyond the band all the people in my life have been vital to my partner and I getting through what we went through. This is what the second album is all about. It’s about looking around you and learning to love yourself by projecting all of this shit onto people to reflect. The band and the process of being in a band has been a life-saver once again. That’s the point of art and music as such, it’s the best way to survive catastrophe in your life (beyond paramedics and shit). As an emotional catastrophe, expressing yourself is the way to save yourself from all sorts of horrors.

Q: I guess you’ve picked up a community because of that honesty as well?

A: I think the reason why a lot of people have connected with us as a band is because they see themselves in us. We’ve not put ourselves on any sort of mystical platform. Anyone can be an Idles. Anyone can start a band, work their ass of for eight years and get to where we are. If you work hard at something for nearly a decade then you’re going to get good at it at some point. If you work hard and you’re good to people then you’ll get somewhere. The whole notion and ethos of our art is about transparency. Most of the stuff that you get bombarded with in magazines and on television are not real. That’s not how normal people look. Photoshopped people are not normal. Normal people have stretch marks and depression and they’ve got addictions. Showing that and trying to get that out into popular culture so people don’t feel shit about themselves is what we’re all about. I’m not trying to make out I’m fucking John Lennon, I’m not a working class hero but I’m not interested in projecting anything but the truth through something that sounds fucking sick. We’re just hungry. With this album we’ve done what we wanted. We had real fun with the music so we can enjoy expressing the crappy part of life. It’s about enjoying the bruises and sharing it with a community. The more fun you have, the more people will look inside the windows of that lock-in and want to join the party. We are so privileged to be able to play to people and travel the world with our mates. Anyone who does that and tries to look aloof is a cunt. It’s not something you should be aloof about because trust me it doesn’t last forever. It is the best feeling on the planet without a doubt.

Idles play Latitude Festival on Sunday, July 15 - BBC Music Stage.

Words by Rhys Buchanan