what's the difference?
A staggering lack of ideas. I know you're not a fan of this whole thing but it's very evident to me that, to cite three modern examples, the uninhibited guitar noise freakouts of Parquet Courts'
Sunbathing Animal, the Nick Cave-esque dark romantic poetry of Protomartyr's
Relatives in Descent and the bold, sprawling ambition of Preoccupations'
Viet Cong are substantially leagues ahead of this one-note garbage.
IDLES are undeniably just a spruced-up pop imitation of their influences. I see a lot of fans comparing them to The Jesus Lizard but the truth is there's a brooding subtlety and a well-honed flair behind TJL's aggressive demeanour that Talbot and his gurning compadres are simply unable to grasp. What people fail to acknowledge, due to being either too old or too young or too stupid, is that IDLES' success lies primarily in the fact that they have been championed by stuffy institutions like Kerrang! and Steve Lamacq, rinsed and repeated for their catchphrases and simplistic stomps which are just easily digestible radio fodder. They're celebrated for taking punk/noise rock back to its roots with a woke modern twist, but beneath the veneer of Hawaiian shirts and lashing out at the patriarchy and "look at us not taking punk seriously" photoshoots, they're just a boyband with very little to say.
Their core ideals don't extend much beyond the chanting hooliganism and endless similes of Talbot's piss-awful lyricism. The lyrics on
Model Village are bordering on offensive stereotyping from a pack of blinkered city boys, and barking "I raise my pink fist and say 'Black is beautiful'" on
Grounds stinks of that same ballpark of white male privilege that they claim to be lambasting but are actually stumbling right into. They also recently found themselves in a spot of bother for not offering equal pay to female support acts. Sure, they made steps to rectify this as soon as possible, but in 2020, given their apparent stance on these issues, isn't that just the bare minimum effort? Try harder you fucking simpletons.
And then there's the trademark get-out clause of every crap band: "But they're really good live!" Well, I'd argue that's not exactly hard when your music is so woefully basic that any added flourish or embellishment on stage would be a marked improvement. The primal aggression of their sound is less Drive Like Jehu and more just postmodern football chants. You can see why they're so popular with first generation punk rockers when aesthetically they're not too dissimilar from bone-headed punk staples like The Ruts or Sham 69. "They've got the kids united! Look at the size of that festival mosh pit!" Do you know how fucking easy it is to get a mosh pit going at a festival? You could give a bloke a megaphone and get him to strip down to his pants and yell "FUCK JAMES BOND" over and over and people would be falling over themselves in a heartbeat. Oh wait, that's actually what IDLES do, isn't it?
