Day 403: IDLES – Joy as an Act of Resistance.
IDLES are practically what this project was made for – I hear something about IDLES or someone talks about IDLES, I think “I should really listen to those guys someday”, and then that day just never comes and I rinse and repeat about a year later. Today I once again came across IDLES and thought it was high time to finally give them a go.
Album cover courtesy of Partisan Records
IDLES are a British post-punk band from Bristol who were formed in 2009 by singer Joe Talbot and bassist Adam Devonshire, who met while they were studying at the University of the West of England. They added Lee Kiernan and Mark Bowen as guitarists and Jon Beavis on the drums in 2014, and released their critically acclaimed debut Brutalism in 2017.
Joy as an Act of Resistance was released in 2018 as the group’s second album, and it became a massive success. It reached number five on the UK albums chart and made its way to several lists of album of the year, as well as getting them nominated for British Breakthrough Act at the Brit Awards, shortlisted for a Mercury Price and won best album at the Ivor Novello Awards. For those of you not familiar with UK music awards, that’s impressive.
It’s strange hearing punk music about joy, especially when it’s laced with such vulnerability. It’s an angry album, sure, but in a way where listening to it on a semi-regular basis would probably be good for the spirit. And everything they’re talking about has only ever gotten more pertinent in the eight years since they released it – whether it’s the British class system, masculinity and societal expectations of boys and men or nationalism and hatred of immigrants, all of these things are now somehow more on the table than they were in 2018, so it’s clearly an album from a band with their finger on the pulse.
And there’s a general sort of “be nice or else”-sentiment to Joy as an Act of Resistance that I enjoy – with lines like "I'm like Stone Cold Steve Austin / I put homophobes in coffins", they’re not exactly coy about where they stand with things. Lyrically, a lot of what they’re saying is aggressively evangelising about loving yourself, being yourself, having righteous anger and fighting injustice, and I think that that’s a sentiment that we need to hear from men in the public eye.
It clearly makes people uncomfortable, though, plenty of their contemporaries have criticised them as preachy middle-class posers, but I’d argue that that’s all the more reason to do it if it causes a reaction. One of the criticisms levelled at them by the frontman of Sleaford Mods was that “Music can’t solve political problems” – probably not with that attitude, but I personally appreciate it when people give it a try. If you as an artist have a platform and you want to use it to try to make a positive difference in the world, why not do it, especially when it clearly resonates with people. “Don’t try because it won’t even do anything” sounds like a weird form of sour grapes.
However, my only criticism would be that while the lyrics are vulnerable, sometimes it feels like they more biting social commentary is still only somewhat surface-level, never really plunging the depths where they hit you too hard as they feel like things that many men have said before. But I’m hoping that that’s something that comes with experience – they’ve released three more albums after this one, I’m sure the writing comes into its own a bit more later on, and if not yet then hopefully on upcoming albums.
I watched their Tiny Desk concert and found my new contender for my favourite YouTube comment under a music-related video: “This makes me realize I'm going through life a little bit too quiet.” If that’s not the best thing their music could do, I don’t know what is. I like what they’re doing in general and have high hopes for their other albums, I’m giving this one an 8.5/10.