Idles: ignore the Tory-bashing – this is Britain’s most riotously exciting band

Joe Talbot of the Idles, performing at Alexandra Palace
Joe Talbot of the Idles, performing at Alexandra Palace - Samir Hussein/WireImage

Idles frontman Joe Talbot knew exactly what the 10,000 strong crowd at London’s Alexandra Palace last night was looking for: angry post-punk delivered with a side of Tory-bashing. The 40-year-old’s introductions ranged from “Viva Palestina” to “F–k the police” and “F–k the King,” the latter delivered in chant-form as he urged every one of his loyal disciples at London’s centrist-dad convention to crouch on the floor and shout in unison.

An Idles gig is, admittedly, probably quite an infuriating place if you’re not a card-carrying liberal, but if you can overlook the polemic then they’re always great fun. Talbot is a tour de force of a lead, possessed of an intrinsic knack for channelling the hype of the crowd into his own manic energy: his mop of pink hair shaking in tandem with his taut, tattooed body as he strutted around the stage like an animal.

Since releasing their debut album Brutalism back in 2017, the Bristolian quintet – made up of Talbot, bassist Adam Devonshire, guitarists Mark Bowen and Lee Kiernan and drummer Jon Beavis – have become arguably Britain’s biggest breakthrough rock band. This past year saw their second Number 1 album – the excellent, genre-bending Tangk – and a debut headline slot on Glastonbury’s Other Stage, a confident set that was, inevitably, overshadowed by the presence of a “migrant lifeboat” installation made by Banksy (though the band did not know the artist had planned the stunt).

So here they were, five men on top of the world and serving up a slice of thrilling spoken-word punk for their adoring audience. Bowen was on particularly riotous form: clad in a skin-tight floral maxi dress, he lunged into the crowd, never missing a strum of his guitar as he crowd-surfed; his and Kiernan’s dirty, muscular strings lending the necessary power to uphold such crowd-pleasing singles as I’m Scum, Colossus and Mother (the latter’s refrain of “The best way to scare a Tory is to read and get rich” eliciting a deafening singalong).

There were breaks from the angst of it all, though, with Dancer – a collaboration with New York electro-indie pioneers LCD Soundsystem, from Tangk – offering a more melodic sound, while a late cover of Mariah Carey’s festive behemoth All I Want For Christmas is You turned the mood from Corbynite-student gathering into a wholesome shindig teeing us up for the tinsel-strewn joy of December.

Their witty, politically-charged lyrics are strengthened by terrific musicianship, shepherded by a frontman who, in Talbot, seems genuinely unbothered about rubbing people up the wrong way, however high and mighty, and only cares about ensuring his fans have a bloody good (and loud) night out.


Idles play Alexandra Palace, November 30, then touring the UK; www.idlesband.com