Rising from the Bristol post-punk scene with 2017’s Brutalism, Idles momentarily seemed like route-one firebrands, taking on toxic masculinity, a crumbling NHS and the gamed class system over chippy beats and jawbreaker riffs. But if nobody expected the broadened horizons of 2021’s Crawler – a fourth album that saw frontman Joe Talbot stop rabble-rousing to actually sing, while the band pinballed between glam, soul and brooding electronica – then this year’s Tangk is an even bolder leap, putting acres of distance between Idles and their noisenik roots.
That the band now sound capable of anything is largely down to the partnership between Mark Bowen and Lee Kiernan: two guitarists who reject anything that’s even on nodding terms with cliché. Their manifesto, as set out in today’s interview in the band’s rehearsal space, is as bold as it is refreshing. No traditional guitar parts. No familiar sounds. No solos. Sometimes not even a tuner. “We’re trying to avoid sounding like a conventional guitar band,” says Bowen. “We’re always like, ‘Well, where can a guitar go that isn’t expected?’”
What did you hope to achieve with Tangk, relative to past albums?
“We laid some groundwork on , in that we were taking a more experimental approach. So the goal on was to push that further. I felt like I had reached
