Sounds Like IDLES

Danny Nedelko – IDLES

There’s arguably no song that sums up the band’s ethos better than this tribute to their friend Danny, a Ukrainian immigrant who left Kiev at the age of 15 and moved to provincial British seaside town Bournemouth, eventually becoming lead singer of Bristol underground punk band Heavy Lungs. Joe Talbot’s lyrics are typically oblique, provocative, daft and uncompromising. And best of all the song has a joyful, chant-along hook that makes sense in any language. But the message is clear: immigrants are human beings just like the rest of us. And at the end of the song, Joe literally spells it out. Those letters, in case you have trouble following, are: DANNY NEDELKO COMMUNITY SO FUCK YOU.

Immigraniada (We Comin’ Rougher) – Gogol Bordello

So – we’re keeping the Ukrainian roots and the focus on immigration. They’re different tracks but the underlying connection is – it’s fucking tough to be an immigrant – even more so nowadays as the world shrinks and the loss of what was can be blamed on skin tone rather than greed.

The Trumpian perception is that the bad brown men are coming for your welfare – oh – your jobs & daughters too – and in the recent Haitian narrative – your pets as well. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a legal or illegal immigrant, there’s a general distaste for the “other” that completely clouds the value and service that they legitimately contribute to society.

I don’t know how to stop the boats or plug the gaps in “the wall” – that’s some heavy duty global politics way above my pay grade, but – as wealth inequality and climate change increase, while freedom and empathy decrease – it’s undoubtedly going to get rougher!

Grace – IDLES

 Okay. Let’s jump forward in time a few years to the most recent IDLES album, TANGK, working with Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich and more surprisingly trap/hip-hop producer Kenny Beats. The song ‘Grace’ is probably the best example of how the band has developed without losing touch with the essence that made them so successful. It’s a slower, mellower version of IDLES, but the simple message – “love is the thing” – is one they’ve always emphasised. Vulnerable, yearning and devoid of angry polemic, it arrived late in 2023 with a cheeky deep-fake video hijacking Chris Martin’s rain-soaked beach walk from ‘Yellow’. In other musical references, look out for an understated but unmistakable nod to ‘A Day in the Life’ at the end.

Warm Shadow – Fink

 I’ve been so out of it over the last few weeks – America turning upside down hasn’t helped! Add to that I completely missed this update and yes – here we are! ;-p. Now it’s going to sound odd but honestly – I’ve been listening to this and thinking – his voice does feel a bit Chris Martin from the early days – and I look up and see the yellow video – put a smile on my face ;-p. And yes – I’d agree it feels more polished and yet still holding the raw authenticity – I do love this track (and of course – A Day In The Life clearly pops at the end!)

So I’m thinking what to do – I’m building a whole new mental set for IDLES – I’ve got some tracks and artists that may come into play – but this track is so much more polished than I thought – and has that hypnotic beat track – that I really felt like continuing that groove – slightly slower tempo but I kinda dig it.

I’m Scum – IDLES

Fink is an artist that has completely passed me by. As far as I know I have never heard the name and yet from a bit of googling I see he has been active as a musician for about 30 years. Hearing this I felt sure he was American, so I was very surprised to find he is British. Perhaps he is not the vocalist?
Sounding American is one thing you would never accuse IDLES of. Joe Talbot’s voice is unmistakeably English.

I think it’s probably time to move on from the chilled section of this playlist as that’s not what IDLES are best known for. And speaking of what they’re best known for, let’s have a track from their breakthrough album, the title of which sums up the band’s raison d’être: Joy as an Act of Resistance.

I could pick almost any track from this record, but let’s have ‘I’m Scum’, a more succinct and punk rock spin on the immortal Groucho Marx line: “I don’t want to belong to any club that will accept people like me as a member”. In this case, more like “…any club that will accept people like you as a member”.
This is a typically catchy and provocative IDLES singalong. My favourite line, which felt especially zeitgeist-y at the time of its 2018 release, is: “This snowflake’s an avalanche.” Many IDLES songs serve as a fuck-you to authority, but this one doesn’t just say fuck you, it also warns the elite that there are more of us than there are of them.

I have a soft spot for James Bond, though. I know he is a “murderous toff”, but he is a fictional one and I happen to enjoy an action spy movie in an exotic location. Escapism is allowed, Joe. In fact, it’s needed now as much as ever.

50ft Queenie – PJ Harvey

This Snowflake’s an avalanche has been rattling around my brain for ages – ‘cos damn I hope it’s true. The impending over correction that’s coming out of America is going to be scary and all the good that was achieved as people “woke up” to the fact that their privilege didn’t actually mean they were better or deserved more than someone else could be swept away.

It’s crazy to think that right now things are shit for so many of the population yet the coming wave is likely going to make it worse. That’s right – tax cuts for the rich – that’s going to trickle down to the price of your Greggs festive slice and your heating bill – not. We’re going to need to get more defiant – louder – and yes potentially angrier if the oligarchs continue to take over. PJ Harvey is an excellent example of how to do this – straight up – no bullshit – ready to fuck with anyone – anywhere – no apologies needed.

Great – IDLES

Decided to go with ‘Great’ as my next choice, another single from the Joy album. It’s arguably a little dated, a product of the Brexit years during which the UK was consumed by the reductively binary debate over whether or not to leave the European Union (and latterly, having decided to do so, how to go about it).

But a great song is a great song, even if the issue that inspired it has since been settled, albeit in a protracted and highly unsatisfactory way. A critic might say that ‘Great’ takes a patronising view of the devotees of the so-called leave campaign.

Personally, I don’t blame xenophobic, reactionary voters for the Brexit debacle. I reserve my own fury for the hypocritical, conniving politicians and business leaders who engineered and funded the lies and misinformation that so many voters trusted.

The Press Corpse – Anti-Flag

 I’m beginning to get a feel for the IDLES vibe (whatever the fuck that means ;-p) It’s taking me back years. There’s that righteous energy to it – derived from the dissatisfaction of injustice.

Brexit – I’ve got opinions. I have a core belief that, just as a human, I’m more for joining than separation. I just feel myself ethically misaligned with Brexit. The ridiculousness of the binary aspect was just fucking hard. I get the role of the politicians and business owners who had a stake in it – but there was another culprit, one that’s even more culpable in the era of Trump: the fucking corporate media.

The people who can magnify a story, birthed in “if it bleeds it leads”, raised by social media’s algorithm, an economic empire built on misery and pain.

Fuck those fuckers.

The last 20 years of devolving media and the development of echo chambers hasn’t been great and has resulted in an orange man in the oval office, again. But I do truly believe that this has been a necessary evil to decouple truth from profit. When there’s no economic incentive to subvert reality, we can all get back to agreeing on facts.

Rupert Murdoch, Ted Turner, William Randolph Hearst, Sumner Redstone, Silvio Berlusconi, Oprah Winfrey, Katharine Graham, Robert Maxwell, Michael Bloomberg – they’re not worried about the price of a bacon sandwich – they fucking define it. The “news media” make more money than all the little busybody politicians combined and yet somehow they get a free pass?!

Here’s Anti-Flag’s The Press Corpse.

Heel / Heal – IDLES

This one takes us back to Brutalism, IDLES’ debut record. ‘Heel / Heal’ is a fairly raw and unrefined piece of work, with Joe Talbot screaming about therapy, desperation, and his general sense of being unmoored. It’s very personal. I think this track shows where they started and why their evolution makes sense — they’ve gone from raw emotion and catharsis to something more layered and intentional.
I’ll admit it’s not my favourite track of theirs musically, but it does feel important in the overall arc — as if you need to understand this kind of song to get why Crawler or TANGK happened the way they did.

Prison Song – System Of A Down

 ​​I remember being driven home on exeat, Robert Kemp was in the car, looking out the window he saw a huge “Come live in a Wimpy home” sign, and deadpanned “Who wants to live in a hamburger?”

It’s not that funny now but back then I couldn’t stop laughing! I mean, who does want to live in a mass produced tract home? And I think the answer is anybody who can. I gotta check my privilege at the door, but the idea that you can own a place where you’re not at the whims of the landlord – there’s a lot to be said for that. There’s power in that. That’s the original American dream – to have a house and a yard and a white picket fence. The dream of agency.

And yet it gets fucked up, because of course it does. While Wimpey and Bovis execs were handing themselves big salaries, people were complaining about poor build quality, land banking and the way that “Help to Buy” programs seemed to go directly to corporate bonuses! Shocker huh!

But I suspect what IDLES are really getting into is the expansion of homogeneity and people being okay with it. That’s what you get, that’s your life – move into a tract home the same as everybody else, work for somebody else, accumulate shit and there’s your life.

It had me bouncing into System of a Down’s “Prison Song.” It’s the same idea of control – or at least, lack of agency. Where those who have power lie and cheat and manipulate the public so that they remain under control, purchasing away like good little boys and girls and being removed if they don’t. That – once you get a glimpse of it – once you see it from a different perspective – it’s fucking impossible to unsee and it breeds a deep seated dissatisfaction with the status quo – a dissatisfaction that so easily lends itself to anger.

My Town (feat. Joe Talbot) – Frank Carter & The Rattlesnakes

If you’ll forgive me skipping past System of A Down for now, my next track follows on thematically from Heel/Heal. It’s not an IDLES song, but ‘My Town’ by Frank Carter & the Rattlesnakes features Joe Talbot on vocals and it’s a different perspective on the place where you live. 

While the previous song ruminates on the impossibility of community in anodyne housing estates erected by large-scale housing developers, this one laments the death of community in once-thriving towns where civic pride is in tatters. Look around any neighbourhood where the economy is in decline you’ll see litter, graffiti, boarded-up businesses, wrecked bus shelters, homeless people sleeping rough and houses with barred windows. Because a neighbourhood is a reflection of the economic reality of the people who live in it. In a flourishing community, where individuals have a sense of purpose, there’s a natural instinct to preserve and improve the world around you. Without community, the opposite is true. To quote Talbot’s depressingly penetrating lines: “You let your dog shit on the street/You kick the roses with your feet/You punch each other in the teeth/You drink until you all fall down/You piss all over sacred ground/You hate yourselves and you hate me”.

In The City – The Jam

And yet what’s the reason for the towns to be run down, to be as they are? Yeah, the economic reality. But where does that come from? My Town was released in 2021, but go back 44 years. And a young Paul Weller was writing about the exercise of power and how the establishment wasn’t going to listen to the people on the ground – wasn’t going to listen to people who were not like them. When you’re not listening to your population and can enforce your will through authority and violence, shit just gets worse and worse. And yeah, I like the association from my town into In The City. But they’re two sides of the same coin. If the people who are exercising power don’t listen to and shut down the people they are governing, you’re going to get the situation that we have, you know, four decades later. An unacceptable shit situation that doesn’t bode well for the future.

Grounds – IDLES

Is it even possible for people running a city or a country to have the same perspective as those who simply live in it? Not likely. The best we can probably hope for is a bit of empathy from the people who rule us. For centuries there has been a default assumption that those in power are the only ones capable of making the right choices, from the divine right of kings through to the ongoing domination of privately educated white men. We’ve already had ‘I’m Scum’ on this playlist, a song about the divide between the masses and our masters. Joe Talbot makes no bones about his contempt for the British monarchy and what it represents. Personally I’m not that bothered about the perpetuation of the royal family. In my opinion, we have bigger problems to solve in the United Kingdom than an honorary head of state that symbolises a repressive class system. I’d rather we change the system and worry about the symbols later. I think those in power are probably happy that we keep busy toppling their statues as long as we are voting them back into power.

For the next track I’m taking the lead from ‘In the City’ with a song that carries the progressive torch of “the young idea” and the unity which could give power to that idea. ‘Grounds’ is a revolutionary song because it rejects the sanitised version of British history and rejects the notion that debate and democracy are the solution. And it does it in a brutish, staccato rhythm that’s defiantly un-melodic. “Do you hear that thunder? That’s the sound of strength in numbers” is pretty much the same analogy as “this snowflake’s an avalanche” (see ‘I’m Scum’, above). It’s a lot to chew over one three-min track. As usual, I may not be entirely in step with what it’s saying. And IDLES usually leave me guessing, so I must admit to being a bit mystified by the video in which Joe gets beaten up and left for dead by a version of himself. And why is it called ‘Grounds’?

Ugly – 1996 Remaster – The Stranglers

But why? Why can’t the people in power just be fucking good? Why does power corrupt & absolute power corrupt absolutely?  Why is it that successful people get to a certain point and just seem to change?

They need to be better.  They need to be better at not falling for the siren song of greed and wealth and more so – they need to be better communicators.  If you’re pissing off half the country – you’re not doing it right – you’re not communicating the vision.

So yeah love Grounds – sonically it’s just really well put together. And the hook: “Do you hear that thunder? That’s the sound of strength in numbers” fuck yeah – I mean, you could literally drop in the sound of the man working on the chain gang, but we’re not gonna do that because I’ve been thinking about The Stranglers since you and I started making this list, and Rattus is one of my favorite albums, ever.

Ugly probably wouldn’t get released today, but it should (maybe without the slightly anti semitic question mark towards the end) Ugly exposes the reality of wealth & power – have it, attract good looking partner, have good looking kids – simple!  The USA has exemplified this pursuit for over a century – “the business of America is business” – yeah but – it’s a house of fucking cards – the Emperor has no clothes – pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.  And now the people with all the money are tearing the system down and guess who’s going to get hurt?!

It’s all so fucking ugly.

Never Fight A Man With A Perm – IDLES

Listening in 2025 ‘Ugly’ sounds so much like Viagra Boys to me. It is definitely weird mentioning Jews in there, apparently randomly, 100% red flag. But it’s a fiercely provocative track and it’s a piece of perverse storytelling. Like a lot of Joe Talbot’s lyrics, it’s a mixture of oblique and direct language and I assume Jean-Jacques Burnel isn’t really confessing to a murder; this is a character who is rambling and railing against the odds, like a scary drunk on a night bus.

I don’t want to pack this playlist too much with songs from the Joy album as that seems a bit too obvious, but I can’t think of a better track to follow ‘Ugly’ than ‘Never Fight a Man with a Perm’, partly because of its reference to personal appearance but mostly because of the attitude. It’s one of IDLES’ most wryly comical tunes, I think (“You are a Topshop tyrant/Even your haircut’s violent”) but it’s also one intense nightclub punch up in the form of song.

delirious – swim school

I’m really beginning to fall in love with IDLES – and it’s the humour that’s bringing me in.  While sure the messaging is on the nose and doesn’t pull any punches about society’s ills – it’s done in a way that doesn’t feel preachy and I’m here for that!

As you say the song references appearance but it’s not really about that – It’s about power, aggression, toxic masculinity—what’s bubbling under the surface. My mind went to Delirious by Swim School. It’s got that same energy, but from a different angle. Where Perm goes after the hyper-masculine bravado, Delirious is tearing down the misogyny that women—especially women in music—deal with constantly.Imagine you’re a professional musician, played hundreds of gigs, and yet, every time you walk into a venue for soundcheck, invariably there’s some dude behind the soundboard who’s being a dick because he has a dick.  This has been her experience – but of course you shouldn’t piss off a writer ‘cos, just like Chaucer back in the day, they’ll eviscerate you in song and words. Good Line of Best Fit write up on the track here: https://www.thelineofbestfit.com/tracks/swim-school-delirious

MTT 420 RR – IDLES

Swim School sound good. I think I had written them off mentally because I was confusing them with another band. Do you know what I mean? I think I was mixing them up with some other band I’d heard that I thought was a bit rubbish but ‘Delirious’ rocks, not at all what I thought. Sorry Swim School, for mistaking you for some other band that was a bit vacuous. I’m not sure who it was now. I think it might be Swim Deep as I really don’t like them much. 

Now that you’ve expressed your appreciation for Joe’s sense of humour, I feel compelled to retort with something unremittingly dark. The opening track from the IDLES lockdown album Crawler, ‘MTT 420 RR’ takes its name from the make and model of a motorcycle that was involved in a near fatal high speed crash with a vehicle Joe was travelling in. It’s a song about how easy it is for a life to be suddenly winked out of existence and the metaphor returns a couple of tracks later with a song called ‘Car Crash’. Lockdown wasn’t a great time for writing songs about hope and optimism.

Break the Bottle – Jess Silk

MTT 420 RR has this brooding sense of sinister, foreboding doom. Just listening to that end coda – “are you ready for the storm?” – it hits me that – we’re never truly ready for what’s coming.

I was listening to the track before I read your write up so I wasn’t thinking “car crash” – but even so – the song that connected in my head was Jess Silk’s “Break the Bottle.” My memory of the track was that of a broken man who had descended into apathetic hell through the bottle and who clearly hadn’t been ready for what was coming. But of course now re-listening – it seems even more appropriate after MTT as one of those “storms” were the death of the protagonists loved ones in a car crash!

I kinda like how we’ve come out of the brooding all enveloping sonic sense of doom of the IDLES track into the raw sparseness of a singer songwriter’s reality – I think it works

Wizz – IDLES

Listened to the playlist (so far) today. I’d forgotten how much great music there was on it! There’s only one IDLES song I can think of to follow Jess Silk’s. It’s inspired by drug abuse rather than alcoholism, once again from their darkest album, Crawler, and I believe it’s their shortest recorded track. It’s a blast of extreme hardcore metal, the manifestation of a drug-fuelled rush of blood to the head. Blink and you’ll miss it.

catch these fists – Wet Leg

I don’t know why my mind went to Wet Leg – I knew I had a memory that their next album must be coming soon (for which I feel really bad for them ‘cos the expectations are sky high – it’ll be a miracle if they meet them) so I popped over and saw the release date is 11 July but had a listen to the two early releases – while CPR has a def groove – I immediately loved catch these fists ;-p. Lyrically it’s a little opaque but the get the feeling that Rhian Teasdale is probably getting a little bored of people trying “catch” her ;-p – plus it does allude to the drugginess of the preceding tracks. With my 5 second crossfade I kinda dig how it comes out of Wizz ;-p

Well Done – IDLES

The first IDLES song I heard, I think, and it nicely encapsulates everything they do best: catchy tune, peculiarly English humour and punchy delivery.  ‘Well Done’ feels like the template for much of their most entertaining and accessible work.

Nailed It – Infinite Pizza

I mean – just – yes – …

Track Listing

• Danny Nedelko – IDLES
• Immigraniada (We Comin’ Rougher) – Gogol Bordello
• Grace – IDLES
• Warm Shadow – Fink
• I’m Scum – IDLES
• 50ft Queenie – PJ Harvey
• Great – IDLES
• The Press Corpse – Anti-Flag
• Heel / Heal – IDLES
• Prison Song – System Of A Down
• My Town (feat. Joe Talbot) – Frank Carter & The Rattlesnakes
• In The City – The Jam
• Grounds – IDLES
• Ugly – 1996 Remaster – The Stranglers
• Never Fight A Man With A Perm – IDLES
• delirious – swim school
• MTT 420 RR – IDLES
• Break the Bottle – Jess Silk
• Wizz – IDLES
• catch these fists – Wet Leg
• Well Done – IDLES
• Nailed It – Infinite Pizza

Playlist image CC licence from Wikimedia