IDLES Brought the House Down at Intimate Bowery Ballroom Show: Review

Paolo Ragusa
·5 min read
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The post IDLES Brought the House Down at Intimate Bowery Ballroom Show: Review appeared first on Consequence.

“We’re not fighting, we’re just dancing” reads the back of a black bomber jacket, a popular item of IDLES merch in the crowd of Tuesday night’s “secret” show at the Bowery Ballroom in New York. Their shows are, as they say, “chaotic good,” with flurries of moshers bubbling up each time the band enters a moment of visceral power. The lead single off their forthcoming fifth album TANGK is aptly titled “Dancer,” an ode to throwing down on the floor “hip-to-hip” and “cheek-to-cheek.”

IDLES’  songs — especially the nervy tracks on 2021’s CRAWLER and several of TANGK’s — are not rays of  major-chord sunshine. There’s a definable trace of darkness swimming through them, whether that be from Lee Kiernan and Mark Bowen’s droning, buzzsaw guitars, or vocalist Joe Talbot’s lyrical cycles of trauma, addiction, fascism, and death. Still, as Talbot has maintained, these songs are love songs. They’re meant to unite the crowd emotionally, spiritually, and, in this day and age, ideologically. There’s no point in fighting, so give your neighbor a hug instead.

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Last night’s show highlighted two facets of the IDLES experience in 2024. For starters, this is a band that is loudly and proudly political. If you didn’t know before the Bowery Ballroom show, then you certainly learned, as Joe Talbot repeatedly took the opportunity to share what IDLES are about.

During “I’m Scum,” Talbot had everyone squat down on the floor and led chants of “Ceasefire now” and “Fuck the King,” which sent a cathartic charge rippling through the audience. Towards the show’s finale, he urged us to continue demanding a ceasefire from our leaders until it happens. And at their set’s conclusion, Talbot’s final words to the audience were, “Viva Palestine.”

The dialogue was underscored by the band’s most politically engaging songs. “Danny Nedelko,” a fan favorite and an ode to immigrants, was a rousing celebration whose relevance is unceasing even six years later. “I’m Scum” features some of IDLES’ most furious anti-establishment lines, especially “I don’t care about the next James Bond/ He kills for country, queen, and God,” which had the audience erupting in cheers. And Talbot’s meditations on masculinity, parenthood, violence and the cycles of trauma — especially on “Colossus,” “The Wheel,” and “Mother” — were made more affecting by the air of love and acceptance that they carried.

The other major feature of IDLES’ show last night was, of course, the extensive sampler of TANGK. It’s clear that the quintet is extraordinarily proud of their new project, which Talbot described to the audience as their “fifth and best album.” The band played nine songs from TANGK, including unreleased tracks “Hall & Oats,” “Roy,” “Gratitude,” “A Gospel,” and “POP POP POP.” They dedicated the latter track to their record label, Partisan, describing them as people who actually care about the music and want to make the world a better place. “Hall & Oats,” on the other hand, was a quick-fire, punk-forward track pledged to Talbot’s brother.

But the most indelible track from the new selection has to be “Roy.” It’s about as close as IDLES have come to writing a truly classic pop song, other than CRAWLER’s stunning “The Beachland Ballroom” (which unfortunately was not played last night). Hearing Talbot at the top of his range passionately crying “Baby,” with bassist Adam Devonshire adding a warm lower harmony, wasn’t just jarring in the spectrum of IDLES’ discography — it was genuinely emotional. “Roy” follows “Grace” and the unreleased piano ballad “A Gospel” as some of the more meditative flavors of TANGK, showing that the band’s patient exploration of space and dynamics in CRAWLER is even more expansive this time around.

In their new songs, old songs, and all of Talbot’s banter in between, there’s an insistence on gratitude. Talbot’s overwhelming positivity can be at odds with the presentation of their knotty themes, and yet, the air of dissonance almost always lends itself to catharsis. Such was the joy of seeing IDLES in a small room like the Bowery Ballroom. Before the show began, attendees behind me discussed IDLES’ 2022 show at Kings Theater in Brooklyn, which holds around 3,000 people compared to Bowery’s 575. They mentioned that the energy was, unsurprisingly, high, but there was a slight disconnect between the patrons in the seats and the moshers in the pit.

A large venue like that is perhaps a less-than-ideal way to experience IDLES, because the whole purpose of these shows is to foster an unbreakable spirit of unity within each attendee. The flurry of activity in the crowd last night was not one of aggression, but one of mutual ecstasy. If someone crowd surfs, you keep them afloat. If someone falls, you pick them up. And if IDLES plays, you don’t fight, you dance.

IDLES will be back touring North American in May; get tickets now.

Photo Gallery: IDLES play Bowery Ballroom in New York City (click to expand and scroll through):

IDLES’ Setlist at the Bowery Ballroom:
IDEA 01
Colossus
Gift Horse
Mr. Motivator
Mother
POP POP POP
Car Crash
I’m Scum
The Wheel
Divide and Conquer
Roy
Never Fight a Man with a Perm
Grace
Hall & Oates
Crawl!
Wizz
Gratitude
A Gospel
Dancer
Danny Nedelko
Rottweiler

IDLES Brought the House Down at Intimate Bowery Ballroom Show: Review
Paolo Ragusa

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