ALBUM REVIEW: IDLES – TANGK (Partisan Records)
IDLES have been able to do no wrong since they burst into our consciousness with their acclaimed debut album Brutalism back in 2017.
Three top 10 albums, huge festival slots and sold-out gigs at London’s Alexandra Palace have made them one of the UK’s hottest bands.
So it’ll be interesting to see what fans make of TANGK, their fifth album, which is markedly different in places from the post-punk powerhouse sound we’ve come to expect from IDLES.
Their last album, 2021’s Grammy-nominated Crawler, saw a shift away from the ‘angry man ranting in a bus station’ style which had seen them held up as heroes of the modern post-punk scene.
TANGK, made with Radiohead’s ‘sixth member’ Nigel Godrich on production duties, continues along the same road, and it’s hard to believe some of the music here is by the same band which thrilled us with Danny Nedelko, Never Fight A Man With A Perm and Model Village.
Vocalist Joe Talbot calls it “our album of gratitude and power. All love songs. All is love.” There’s certainly far more nuance, depth and texture to TANGK than any of IDLES’s previous albums, but we should have guessed that from the singles which preceded its release.
Opening track IDEA 01 is a real slow burner, which sounds like it could soundtrack a horror film; it’s full of tinkling keys and carries a real sense of foreboding. You wait and wait and wait for it to erupt, but it never does.
Gift Horse, the third single, is most like the IDLES we’ve come to expect, full of edge, snot and bluster, as Talbot sings: “Fuck the king/He ain’t the king/She’s the king/Look at him go!”
Pop Pop Pop‘s motorik beat makes it sound like 1979’s electro craze all over again, while drummer Jon Beavis goes all tribal on Roy, which boasts the album’s dirtiest bassline courtesy of Adam Devonshire.
Talbot’s voice is reduced to almost a whisper on A Gospel, against a backdrop of wistful piano and strings, rather than guitar, bass and drums, and the song shows previously unheard vulnerability.
Dance-oriented
But the high point of the album comes with the back-to-back singles Dancer and Grace, which are very different songs indeed. Dancer, the lead single, saw IDLES team up with LCD Soundsystem’S James Murphy and Nancy Whang to produce a more dance-oriented sound.
Grace is different again, with Talbot showing more of that vulnerability, and that he can actually sing as well as rant and rave. It’s the atmospheric centrepiece of TANGK, but I hope the chattering masses who are all too prevalent at big gigs these days shut up long enough for them to play it live.
Guitarists Mark Bowen and Lee Kiernan let loose at last with some beefy riffs on Hall & Oates, but at less than two and a half minutes it’s the shortest song on the album.
Jungle is set against a pattering beat, with swathes of synths washing in and out, and Gratitude promises much but never really gets going (and the way Talbot pronounces ‘gratitood’ really grates).
Things come to a close with the brooding Monolith. Slow and haunting, it’s another deeply atmospheric track, but when you reach the end the overarching feeling about TANGK is one of being slightly underwhelmed.
Missing beats
That might put me at odds with other reviewers, but for me drummer Jon Beavis is the beating heart of IDLES, with his driving, bludgeoning style. Here his work is an exercise in restraint, with tribal toms in some places, shimmering cymbals in others, and motorik beats elsewhere, but we rarely hear the thunder of old. I miss it.
TANGK* is best listened to late at night with the lights down low, safe in the arms of the one you love. It’ll sell shitloads and be some people’s album of the year, and I’m hoping it grows on me. 6.5/10.
- Pronounced “tank” with a whiff of the ‘g’, and an onomatopoeic reference to the lashing way the band imagined the guitars sounding.
