Bristol UK’s IDLES have announced today their forthcoming fifth album, ‘TANGK’.
The 11-track followup to their Grammy-nominated ‘CRAWLER’, ‘TANGK’ was co-produced by Nigel Godrich (Radiohead, The Smile, Beck), the band’s Mark Bowen and Kenny Beats (Denzel Curry, Vince Staples, Benee). In an explosive run of unerringly stirring albums, ‘TANGK’—pronounced “tank” with a whiff of the “g” and an onomatopoeic reference to the lashing way the band imagined the guitars sounding that has grown into a sort of sigil for living in love – is this band’s most ambitious and striking record yet.
IDLES are one of rock’s most powerful units for the last decade. Godrich, Beats and Bowen made for an excellent tandem of foils to IDLES, too, pushing them into new terrain and then pulling the reins as needed. ‘TANGK’ is at once sprawling and focused, imaginative and immediate. Pre-order for ‘TANGK’ is available: https://idles.lnk.to/TANGK
Speaking about the album, lead singer Joe Talbot says, “‘TANGK’. I needed love. So I made it. I gave love out to the world and it feels like magic. This is our album of gratitude and power. All love songs. All is love.”
Out today is the first single and video for the throbbing and scuzzy “Dancer”. Rattling bass and ricocheting guitar giving Talbot space to talk about sweat and sex on the dancefloor. (You will spy LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy and Nancy Whang here, too, singing.) It is lascivious and playful and positive, the ecstatic sound of at least a temporary fix. In the improvised hook, Talbot offers IDLES’ essential new mantra: “I give myself to you/As long as you move on the floor.”
He is singing about the rapture of a new relationship, but he is also singing about the special dynamic between IDLES and their fans, or IDLES and the world at large. This is a band’s vow to keep lifting and fighting for themselves and their listeners, to keep offering the grim persistence of joy and hope and love and wonder as long as that’s what anyone needs to survive. It is a love song the same way that ‘TANGK’ is a love album—open to anyone who requires something to shout out loud in order to fend off any encroaching sense of the void, now or forever.
Joe Talbot tells us “’Dancer’ is the violence that comes from the pounding heart of the dancefloor and rushes through your body and gives you life from music, from love and from you.”
Where IDLES were once set on taking the world’s piss, squaring off with strong jaws against the perennially entitled, and exorcising personal trauma in real time, they have arrived in this new act to offer the fruits of such perseverance: love, joy, and indeed gratitude for the mere opportunity of existence. This music thrives not in spite of our problems but because of them. If we don’t look after ourselves and one another, all of ‘TANGK’ seems to exclaim in one enormous hook after another, who will?
‘TANGK’ TRACKLISTING
1. IDEA 01
2. Gift Horse
3. POP POP POP
4. Roy
5. A Gospel
6. Dancer
7. Grace
8. Hall & Oates
9. Jungle
10. Gratitude
11. Monolith
After playing a surprise set at London’s Village Underground last night, Idles will play Hong Kong and Bangkok as their remaining dates for 2023. They have announced a run of European dates beginning February of next year. See all tour dates below and visit Idlesband.com for more information.
IDLES ON TOUR:
Dec 1st 2023 – Hong Kong, CN @ Clockenflap
Dec 2nd, 2023 – Bangkok, TH @ Maho Rasop Festival
Feb 29th, 2024 – Porto, PT @ Super Bock Arena
March 1st, 2024 – Madrid, ES @ Wizinik
March 2nd, 2024 – Barcelona, ES @ Sant Jordi Club
March 5th, 2024 – Milan, IT @ Alcatraz
March 7th, 2024 – Paris, FR @ Zenith
March 8th, 2024 – Netherlands / Amsterdam, NL @ AFAS
March 9th, 2024 – Antwerp, BE @ Lotto Arena
March 11th, 2024 – Prague, CZ @ SaSaZu
March 12th, 2024 – Luxembourg, LU @ Rockhal
March 14th, 2024 – Zurich, CH @ Halle 622
March 15th, 2024 – Berlin, DE @ Max-Schmeling-Halle
March 16th, 2024 – Hamburg, DE @ Sporthalle
March 18th, 2024 – Stockholm, SE @ Munchen Brewery
March 19th, 2024 – Copenhagen, DK @ KB Hallen
March 21st, 2024 – Cologne, DE @ Palladium
March 22nd, 2024 – München, DE @ Zenith
March 23rd, 2024 – Frankfurt, DE @ Jahrhunderthalle