The trouble with the brutalism of punk is that it doesn’t offer much wriggle room when a band wants to move forwards. And IDLES are moving quickly – this is the Bristol quintet’s fourth album in four and a half years, and their first since the semi-backlash surrounding their third, Ultra Mono, which went to number one but also saw Joe Talbot’s howled sloganeering being criticised, strangely, for failing to be nuanced enough.
They had smooth jazz pianist Jamie Cullum on the last one, but as Crawler opens with the tense synth tapping of MTT 420 RR, it’s plain that being a chart-topping act hasn’t turned them pop. Aside from The End’s roared conclusion: “In spite of it all, life is beautiful,” there are fewer lyrics that would fit neatly on a T-shirt. Over the barrelling bass and drums of The Wheel, Talbot explores the cyclical nature of addiction, passed in his case from mother to son. On Meds his love of bitter irony is still plain, when he proposes that he will “Turn my frown upside down and medicate, meditate, medicate” while still sounding far from stable.
There are occasional subtleties, as with the scratchy electronic layers on Progress, and something approaching conventional singing on the almost pretty The Beachland Ballroom. But the sound overall is pure battering ram, working to best effect on the racing rock and roller Crawl!. On the imminent tour that they were prevented from doing on the last album cycle, plenty of these songs will be huge, vital additions to an already incendiary setlist.
