IT MUST BE LOVE

On their fifth album, TANGK, rock band IDLES lean further into experimentation and softer textures while focusing on a central theme: love. At his home in Bristol, frontman Joe Talbot explains how making an album of love songs helped him to heal, while the band's guitarist and producer Mark Bowen explains the key to their writing partnership

- WILL RICHARDS

JOE TALBOT LEANS across the table as he cradles a cup of coffee in his Bristol home. "I have two things in my life: my child and this album," he says. The album in question is TANGK, IDLES' fifth and most musically adventurous record yet. After he speaks to me vivaciously about its themes of love and his continued recovery from addiction, he heads off to pick his child up from school. "This is the best job in the world," he smiles of the dual passions that currently rule the 39-year-old's life.

Forming in Bristol in 2009, IDLES started out making soft indie-pop songs in the vein of The Maccabees. The next near-decade saw line-up changes and hundreds of small gigs which led to them toughening up their sound and releasing lauded debut album Brutalism in 2017. Its raucous, crunchy sound and Talbot's unashamedly vulnerable and political lyrics ("The best way to scare a Tory is to read and get rich," he boomed on 'Mother') struck a chord with both young listeners and disenfranchised old punks. After toiling away for eight years, they became the most important guitar band in the country almost overnight.

Second album Joy as an Act of Resistance followed in 2018, and soon they were headlining Alexandra Palace and being held up as the latest in a long line of saviours of British guitar music whether it needed saving or not. They doubled down on the formula on 2020 album Ultra Mono, before taking a reflective step back on the following year's CRAWLER, an album more concerned with lyrical and sonic experimentation than the battering ram of drums and guitars that they'd made their name with. Throughout it all, Talbot has been unwaveringly open in his interviews and lyrics about his struggles with addiction and how the band and its community of fans have supported him and lifted him up during his journey.