CRAWLER
When IDLES released their third album, *Ultra Mono*, in September 2020, singer Joe Talbot told Apple Music that it was focused on being present and, he said, “accepting who you are in that moment.” On the Bristol band’s fourth record, which arrived 14 months later, that perspective turns sharply back to the past as Talbot examines his struggles with addiction. “I started therapy and it was the first time I really started to compartmentalize the last 20 years, starting with my mum’s alcoholism and then learning to take accountability for what I’d done, all the bad decisions I’d made,” he tells Apple Music’s Zane Lowe. “But also where these bad decisions came from—as a forgiveness thing but way more as a responsibility thing. Two years sober, all that stuff, and I came out and it was just fluid, we \[Talbot and guitarist Mark Bowen\] both just wrote it and it was beautiful.” Talbot is unshrinkingly honest in his self-examination. Opener “MTT 420 RR” considers mortality via visceral reflections on a driving incident that the singer was fortunate to escape alive, before his experiences with the consuming cycle of addiction cut through the pneumatic riffs of “The Wheel.” There’s hope here, too. During soul-powered centerpiece “The Beachland Ballroom,” Talbot is as impassioned as ever and newly melodic (“It was a conversation we had, I wanted to start singing”). It’s a song where he’s on his knees but he can discern some light. “The plurality of it is that perspective of *CRAWLER*, the title,” he says. “Recovery isn’t just a beautiful thing, you have to go through a lot of processes that are ugly and you’ve got to look at yourself and go, ‘Yeah, you were not a good person to these people, you did this.’ That’s where the beauty comes from—afterwards you have a wider perspective of where you are. And also from other people’s perspectives, you see these things, you see people recovering or completely enthralled in addiction, and it’s all different angles. We wanted to create a picture of recovery and hope but from ugly and beautiful angles. You’re on your knees, some people are begging, some people are working, praying, whatever it is—you’ve got to get through it.” *CRAWLER* may be IDLES’ most introspective work to date, but their social and political focus remains sharp enough on the tightly coiled “The New Sensation” to skewer Conservative MP Rishi Sunak’s suggestion that some people, including artists and musicians, should abandon their careers and retrain in a post-pandemic world. With its rage and wit, its bleakness and hope, and its diversions from the band’s post-punk foundations into ominous electronica (“MTT 420 RR”), glitchy psych textures (“Progress”), and motorik rhythms butting up against free jazz (“Meds”), *CRAWLER* upholds Talbot’s earliest aims for the band. In 2009, he resolved to create something with substance and impact—an antidote to the bands he’d watched in Bristol and London. “They looked beautiful but bored,” he says. “They were clothes hangers, models. I was so sick of paying money to see bored people. Like, ‘What are you doing? Where’s the love?’ I was at a place where I needed an outlet, and luckily I found four brothers who saved my life. And the rest is IDLES.”
Exploring personal subject matter and wider musical terrain, the Bristol band’s fourth album plays like the dark origin story for how Idles became the preeminent life coaches of modern post-punk.
The Bristol band's fourth album is a course correction, one that dials down the aggression in favour of reflection
The Bristol band’s fourth record is magnetic storytelling tempered with newfound patience.
There are occasional subtleties here, but overall this is the work of a band moving furiously forward
The UK’s most incendiary post-punks IDLES continue to evolve, not revolve, on fourth album...
Damon Albarn’s latest solo outing proves he refuses to rest on his laurels, as Courtney Barnett faces down the doom and gloom of modern-day existence. Rod Stewart’s latest effort is the sonic equivalent of dad dancing, while Idles offer some of their most interesting music yet
Although they are still the U.K.'s most vital punk band, Idles are on fire, not just in terms of their productivity -- four albums in four years -- or their renewed vigor, but also off the back of their first lukewarm record, Ultra Mono.
Well, they've done it. Against all odds, IDLES have become… boring. What an unlikely feat! For a group of rowdy British punks who rose to pr...
Post-punk has always been a genre that only vaguely fitted IDLES, used only because it was a convenient way to compare them to their contemporaries.
The phenomenon that continues to grow from strength to strength. It might have taken the best part of a decade for IDLES to make any kind of headway outside of their native Bristol, yet since 2017’s debut Brutalism provided an unsuspecting and unrelenting platform into the wider world, it’s probably fair to say they haven’t looked back.
The boisterous and aggressive Bristol punks IDLES are back with their raucous fourth record - ‘Crawler’. Serving as a post-pandemic follow-up
No holds are barred, and nothing is off-limits, as Joe Talbot goes deep on this expansive follow-up to last year’s Ultra Mono<br>
Idles have never sounded more vulnerable than they do on the reflective Crawler – a subtly progressive step forward from the Bristol punks
CRAWLER by IDLES Album review by Adam Williams. The UK band's forthcoming release, comes out on November 12, via Partisan Records
Fourth album from Bristol alt-rock pummellers lets the shade to bleed through. Review by Thomas H Green.