After a welcome evening of drinks with friends, and later board games and telly with my lovely wife, I awoke this morning with a slight headache, rum the likely culprit.
Disc 1618 is…Crawler
Artist: IDLES
Year of Release: 2021
What’s up with the Cover? Is this an astronaut falling from the sky, or a motorcyclist being launched from a bike? Or maybe the ghost of either, ethereally floating by his old apartment window? The album has a lot of car crash imagery, which doesn’t rule the ghost out, but makes the astronaut less likely.
How I Came To Know It: Each year I trade a “year’s best music” list with a fellow from work named Andy. Our lists rarely align, but I often find a few records on his that are new and welcome discoveries. This is one of those from 2021.
How It Stacks Up: I only have this one IDLES album, so it can’t stack up.
Rating: 4 stars
“Crawler” is a brutal, oppressive assault, a tidal wave of industrial tinged rock and roll, hard, jittery and electric. You can fight the wave, but as I quickly learned, the joy in this record is letting it envelope and subsume you.
That’s not to say this music doesn’t grate, it is just that the grating is part of the charm. It’s like the growl of an internal combustion engine – there’s a lot of explosive energy and metal whirring around, and it hurtles you forward. It’s only oppressive when you don’t go along for the ride.
The IDLES ease you into the record slowly, however, starting things off with a haunting Nick Cave-like number, “MTT 420 RR”. As it happens, a MTT 420 RR is a high-performance motorcycle. The song starts with a haunting repeated refrain of “It was February. I was cold and I was high.” Surely our narrator doesn’t intend to ride his motorcycle in such a state? Based on the many violent and aggressive tunes that follow (one is even called “Car Crash”) we must assume he does.
This record is great driving music, with plenty of tunes featuring the Motorik drumbeat of Krautrock that calls for a heavy foot on the accelerator. Full disclosure, I had no idea about “Motorik” before writing this review, but if you want to learn more about it there’s an intriguing five minute video that can tell you more here.
The album also has slow swayers, but even these feel ominous. Part of this is the production, which leans heavily into thump and crunch, and part of it is Joe Talbot’s apocalyptic, angst-filled vocals. Talbot is a master of straight-jacketed fury, up there with the Sleaford Mods’ Jason Williamson and Henry Rollins.
“Meds” is a strong example of Talbot’s talent, as he alternates exclamations of “medicate” and “meditate” until they’re a single concept. IDLES is also one of those bands that don’t lose their accent when singing, which adds a bawling, pub-shouted conversation feel to the music.
While I enjoyed this record, around the third listen I found myself separating from the brutalism and wanting something more gentle so walking to work yesterday morning I put the ole MP3 player on “random play all” rather than take on a fourth listen of “Crawler”. That wasn’t because it is a bad album – it’s great – I just needed a break.
As for my Top 10 list for 2021, I don’t think this one would crack it, but it comes damn close, and if you are in the mood for a little gasoline fueled rock and roll, I heartily recommend it.
Best tracks: MTT 420 RR, The Wheel, The New Sensation, Stockholm Syndrome, Crawl!, Meds
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