BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:-//wp-events-plugin.com//7.2.3.1//EN TZID:America/New_York X-WR-TIMEZONE:America/New_York BEGIN:VEVENT UID:563@jointherevolution.net DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20240610T190000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20240610T230000 DTSTAMP:20240410T163556Z URL:https://www.jointherevolution.net/concerts/idles-love-is-the-fing-tour -2024/ SUMMARY:IDLES: LOVE IS THE FING TOUR 2024 DESCRIPTION:IDLES – TANGK\n\n \;\n\nIn just 40 minutes\, Joe Talbot s ays the word love 29 times. He speaks of gratitude as lifeblood\, each new morning as a blessing. He talks of freudenfreude—that is\, the opposite of schadenfreude\, or “joy on joy\,” as he puts it—less as a tool t han as a weapon against a world that wants to diminish happiness\, to comp ress it until it is controllable. On second thought\, Talbot doesn’t act ually say\, speak\, or talk much at all during TANGK\, the totally righteo us fifth album from his madcap truth-seekers\, IDLES. Despite his reputati on as an incendiary post-punk sparkplug\, he sings almost all the feelings inside these 10 songs with hard-earned soul\, offering each lusty vow or solidarity plea as a bona fide pop song—that is\, a thing for everyone t o pass around and share\, communal anthems intended for overcoming our gri evance. \n\n \;\n\nIn an explosive run of unerringly stirring albums\ , TANGK—pronounced “tank” with a whiff of the “g\,” and an onoma topoeic reference to the lashing way he imagined the guitars sounding that has grown into a sort of sigil for living in love—is this band’s most ambitious and striking record yet. Where IDLES were once set on taking th e world’s piss\, squaring off with strong jaws against the perennially e ntitled\, and exorcising personal trauma in real time\, they have arrived in this new act to offer the fruits of such perseverance: love\, joy\, and indeed gratitude for the mere opportunity of existence. This music thrive s not in spite of our problems but because of them. If we don’t look aft er ourselves and one another\, all of TANGK seems to exclaim in one enormo us hook after another\, who will? “Keep my people up/That’s my tool\, ” Talbot snaps to end the first verse of the thrilling “POP POP POP. ” Those people are all of us\, Talbot included. These are impassioned no tes to self: to keep going\, to keep loving\, to keep being.\n\n \;\n\ nA delicious and peculiar tension has long animated IDLES. Talbot has alwa ys been an impulsive force\, a hip-hop enthusiast whose breathless lyrics take aim at all necessary targets. But Mark Bowen\, the inveterate explore r for whom the label “guitarist” is woefully reductive\, is contemplat ive and studied\, endlessly interested in the production minutiae of\, say \, Aphex Twin or Sunn O))). The frisson of these dual perspectives has gro wn with IDLES\, getting them from the raw scorn of Brutalism to the contor ted compulsion of Crawler in only four years. \n\n \;\n\nThe contrast has never been more complete or compelling than it is here\, on TANGK. Bo wen paired off for multiple sessions with Nigel Godrich in his Brixton lab oratory\, learning the language of tape loops and using them to incubate n ew ideas for songs. (The opener\, “IDEA 1\,” indeed stems from their f irst session\, dated October 2022.) It was paradisical for Bowen\, going d eep with Godrich to add texture to little nuanced themes. Talbot was there \, too\, but\, as he offered input about the length of this loop or the mo od of that one\, he recognized that this was more like the preparation for his own takeoff. That would come in time. \n\n \;\n\n“What Joe and I have realized as friends and co-songwriters is that we are almost the e xact opposite person\, in every way\,” says Bowen\, laughing. “There w as a time we thought it was important to be of one mind\, but we’re happ ier and better to become more different as we go.”\n\n \;\n\nWhen th e band arrived at a seaside retreat in the south of France with Godrich an d Kenny Beats\, who had helmed the Grammy-nominated Crawler\, Talbot had w ritten only three verses to the songs that would become TANGK on purpose. He knew what he wanted\, after all: songs that would allow him to step to the microphone and deliver his gospel as he felt it in that moment\, with the same intensity heroes Otis Redding or Lee Moses once deployed and the same gusto the band has on stage. He had plenty to power him\, after all\, from the stark state of the pandemic world and the death of his firstborn to his overwhelming love for his daughter and a joyous new romance. Talbo t wanted to believe every word in that moment\, to supply TANGK with the c onfidence of his real convictions. \n\n \;\n\n“If you give people e verything on stage\, they’ll give you everything back. There’s no bull shit in our crowd\, no lack of lucidity\,” he says. “I wanted to bring that to a record. I’ve got more strength in me than I ever have\, and i t comes from love.” He attacked the microphone with all these feelings —“vulnerable/strong like bull\,” as he himself captures that dichoto my in a canny rhyme. The strategy worked\, supplying him with a kind of ev angelical might. \n\n \;\n\nA radical sense of defiant empowerment ra diates from these songs. Lunging in the verses and arcing ever upward in t he chorus\, “Gift Horse” is a testament to redemption\, to finding som ething or someone that makes the worries of the world feel not just tolera ble but motivating. Sporting the biggest and most guileless hook in IDLES ’ catalogue\, “Roy” documents a surrender to infatuation and the way such an act can steel you from self-doubt\, even making you feel immortal . And the skittering “Grace\,” which slowly blooms like a rose cast in some unimagined psychedelic shade\, discards the lure of generational nih ilism for a more benevolent and unifying force: love. “No god\, no king\ , I said love is the thing\,” Talbot repeats\, stepping down from the pe destal of his pearly falsetto to affirm his epiphany. \n\n \;\n\nMake no mistake: IDLES have not softened on TANGK\, musically or socially. “ Hall And Oates” is a piece of hardcore shrapnel\, with shrieking guitars and a battering-ram rhythm section hurling themselves in the direction of hope. Pulsing like a rock approximation of jungle music\, “Jungle” is a classic IDLES fisticuffs\, sneering at the judgements of authority figu res and the way they cut our self-worth at the knees. “I lost myself aga in\,” Talbot sings\, looking for the band to pull him forward\, toward s alvation. They do. Adam Devonshire\, John Beavis\, and Lee Kiernan have ma de IDLES one of rock’s most powerful units for the last decade\; they re spond to these new prompts like the pistons of some sleek sports car. Godr ich and Bowen made for an excellent tandem of foils to IDLES\, too\, pushi ng them into new terrain and then pulling the reins as needed. TANGK is at once sprawling and focused\, imaginative and immediate.\n\n \;\n\n“ Dancer” is their throbbing and scuzzy number toward the center of TANGK\ , rattling bass and ricocheting guitar giving Talbot space to talk about s weat and sex on the dancefloor. (You will spy LCD Soundsystem’s James Mu rphy and Nancy Whang here\, too\, singing.) It is lascivious and playful a nd positive\, the ecstatic sound of at least a temporary fix. In the impro vised hook\, Talbot offers IDLES’ essential new mantra: “I give myself to you/As long as you move on the floor.” \n\n \;\n\nHe is singing about the rapture of a new relationship\, but he is also singing about th e special dynamic between IDLES and their fans\, or IDLES and the world at large. This is a band’s vow to keep lifting and fighting for themselves and their listeners\, to keep offering the grim persistence of joy and ho pe and love and wonder as long as that’s what anyone needs to survive. I t is a love song the same way that TANGK is a love album—open to anyone who requires something to shout out loud in order to fend off any encroach ing sense of the void\, now or forever.  ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.jointherevolution.net/wp-content/upl oads/2023/11/REV_IDL1_4X6.jpg CATEGORIES:All Ages,Concerts LOCATION:Revolution Live\, 100 SW 3rd Ave.\, Fort Lauderdale\, FL\, 33312\, United States GEO:26.121358;-80.1461974 X-APPLE-STRUCTURED-LOCATION;VALUE=URI;X-ADDRESS=100 SW 3rd Ave.\, Fort Laud erdale\, FL\, 33312\, United States;X-APPLE-RADIUS=100;X-TITLE=Revolution Live:geo:26.121358,-80.1461974 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:America/New_York X-LIC-LOCATION:America/New_York BEGIN:DAYLIGHT DTSTART:20240310T030000 TZOFFSETFROM:-0500 TZOFFSETTO:-0400 TZNAME:EDT END:DAYLIGHT END:VTIMEZONE END:VCALENDAR