LET'S DANCE

Dialling back on the aggressive approach that has helped bring Idles this far, and putting swing to the stomp, their new album is intended to make you shake a leg rather than a fist

- Johnny Sharp

We’re barely a minute into Classic Rock’s Zoom interview with Mark Bowen and Joe Talbot from Idles when we are rudely interrupted. Your correspondent’s cocker spaniel, Barney, is barking at a squirrel he’s spotted at the window.

“What’s your favourite breed?” Talbot asks.

“Well I like spaniels, obviously, but we also look after a cockapoo and a labrador-retriever cross sometimes…”

“Don’t like cockapoos,” he replies, leaning intensely into the camera of a laptop. “They’re a bit stuck up for me. The only dogs I love are golden retrievers. I learned a fact recently. If you died in your house, within hours most dogs would start eating your face, out of hunger. But a golden retriever would wait until it was at death’s door, when it had no option but to eat you or it would die.”

And that’s Joe Talbot – a man you can easily imagine getting into a random pub conversation with at the drop of a beer mat, offering pearls of wisdom that leave you curious but wondering if it might be worth Googling it later to double-check.

There’s a lot more to him than that, though. That much will be evident to anyone who’s listened closely to Idles records or caught the full blast of their live shows over the past seven years or so. Longtime fans will recall how Talbot’s lyrics have tackled subjects as delicate as caring for his late mother (after her paralysis following a stroke), the death of his young daughter, his own bisexuality and the toxic masculinity surrounding him, his empathy with immigrants, and frustrations at Brexiteer Little Englanders. Life experiences of a man who walks wobbly emotional tightropes between aggression and sensitivity, empathy and contempt, humour and rage.