Ep 122: IDLES' Joe Talbot

of the world. And yeah, I'd love to know what people make of this.

good time with that and the band. I think we're all hungry for a new tour, a different show and new songs and a challenge. You can only go so far with a tour where it almost becomes too easy. And I mean that in the best way possible. It's the best thing in the world. As I've always said, not apologies, it gets easy, and we don't like that.

We're like a challenge and we want to keep moving forward and getting better and we're really good at what we do, so we want to be not as good, so we've got something to work towards.

very much relate to that. Have you got kinder on yourself over the last few years when you know those those periods are coming, and like, having been through it a few times, do you you.

obvious self abuse, but I'm kinder to others. What I've learned in the past four years of being a father is that if you approach life with empathy, you get more out of it. So with that in mind, I approach things with empathy. I'm a lot more patient. I'm a lot kinder. I think I'm really just learning to be vulnerable, practicing what I've been talking about, and it just takes a long time. These things don't happen over night. And I've been learning a long time, and I'm in

a flux. I've realizing just how much I have to learn, and that's beautiful and exciting. So I'm very grateful that I've had an audience that have allowed us to learn slowly.

magic is going to be to play it. The Jamie T show was beautiful because I got to see Jamie T and seeing someone almost come out of a cocoon and become this beautiful, vibrant human being on stage. It was a really lovely thing to see. And I think when you see your friends succeed, that's a Freuda and Frida drop there, But seeing other people succeed, it's a very uplifting feeling when you give a shit. So that was good.

very different people. Obviously, all three of us, we're an odd trio, but we have the same intention and we have a lot of love, and we all connect with soul music. So I think it would just be a great project to do, even just for ourselves if it doesn't come out. But yeah, it excites me that idea, but then a lot of musical ideas excite me at the moment thinking about you know, I want to do a noise project techno thing with Bobo. Sorry, I'm gonna

stop calling Bobo. It makes my shit. It's when I hear someone else calling it, so I don't know why I do, but when So, yeah, we're there's plenty coming.

seeing them play, speaking to them, collaborating with them. Was there anything that you took away from that experience that you're going to kind of take into the future if you like?

it's probably the best tour I've ever done. It was fucking magic.

support band, I don't. I don't watch it much because I've picked them because I love them every support band we've ever had. That's why next year it's going to be a nightmare to pick them. They to choose from. Yeah that I love you that I've already put themselves forward. I don't enjoy it, but yeah, so watching them was great, the incredible, incredible life band and watching their basis who

got ill and had to leave the tour. They're more pitching and theyve included played a few songs every night, which was a dream in itself. Like, you know, I've known that guy since he was sixteen. He was this bean pole with weird blonde hair and banging to speed and like we fell in love, you know. And to see this very insecure man end up on a stage playing with his favorite band was one of the most

beautiful things I've ever seen. So that was cool. There's a lot of good things happened there, and it taught me that if you live by your standards and you treat everyone with love and respect, that's the best way to longevity because you'll come out of it sleeping well at night, as well as still doing what you love.

you know. But with this record, it was like we you know, we're more and more privileged because there are fucking increments to this game. Suddenly you're getting paid ten times more, you're spending ten times more on your tools, You've got more time to record. Because you have more money, you can go to your heroes and ask them to work,

and with that comes gratitude. That gratitude comes a sense of hard work that's how you show you're grateful by challenging yourself, moving forward, breaking things down and putting yourself to work. And like, that's the most exciting bit of our job. It's that bit when you're really fucking changing things, breaking things down and moving forward. So this record was like the most that because we had three weeks in the studio instead of two and we were working with

two of our favorite producers on the planet. You've got to make that work, man. I came at it with insecurity, so I didn't know if I was quite good enough for the writing process. I wrote a bunch of songs in the room with the boys in Bristol without Boeing, but they didn't really feel like there was this exciting, transgressive thing behind them that I wanted it to be.

And I set this thing in my head where I was going to write lyrics before I went to the booth, because I did half the albums in the booth before that, Whereas I felt like, no, these songs deserve to be written before and really work at it because I might be missing out on something, do you know what I mean? Like I might have written a better song if I had spent a month on it. And it's that's bollocks.

And I realized that late I was like, I didn't write a single word because I was busy writing the music, you know, I was writing the music with buying in London, in Nysall Studio in Brixton. And then it just got to a point where I was just like confused. I don't like displacement. I like all my ducks in a row. I like knowing where all my tools are alone, where the exit is. And I like, you know, carrying a knife just so I can open the packet myself and

see what's inside. Do you know what I mean? Under three inches half? I think it's too But anyway, like, I wasn't comfortable and it took me a while to realize that that's the point. But it was, you know, it was. It was great. It was the most fruitful, the most learning I've done and I've now, I mean in terms of mental health and where I'm at in life. Flack I was not same as I was a crawler man. Like I was sober then, I'm sober now. I was

drinking and doing drugs in between. I have a sense of excitement and sense that I have a new perspective in our potential now, I'm sober, sober, and and I understand we have way more potential than we did before. And that's because of the two. And Bowen produced the record as well, but I have to have a different relationship with him than I do to Kenny and Nigel. But with those two, they really forced us to challenge ourselves.

the other Bristol bands and things like that. What then you probably had a very different idea to like what the purpose and the potential of the band was to what you do now. So when you talk about purpose and potential of the band now, what do you think of.

within you know, it's within yourself. You gatekeep yourself. You know, you can't do that imposter syndrome. I don't have that really anymore. I just know that I've got a lot of work to do it for I want to be what I want to be is and you know, I've just got timing well in between school drops ship. But yeah, like I'm physically a lot fitter and stronger, which helps the potential it's musical. I want to achieve what my

hero has achieved. There was a point, you know, where I found a channel to go down musically with the first two records, and then I realized that there's so many other facets to me as a human being. That I want to express. So I got to kind of burn that effigy of what everyone's made of idols in order to start again. We did that, and now we can do whatever the fuck we want.

you're a fan of Eddie Vedder. Those are the things that I was hearing in that song, and so I wondered if you felt like you push yourself further than ever before vocally on this absolutely.

doing a song justice every time. Some deserve violence and some deserve grace. And that's where I'm at, you know. And I learned that from being given that time in the pandemic to really listen to myself. Do you know what I mean? That was just it like I had loads of time my mind so and I wasn't gonna waste it.

which was a great moment. And it's a song I wrote last, as it is in I wrote it in the studio obviously recording in France, and I left it to the last because I was so nervous about it, because I wanted to do it justice because it was like a you know, Bowen's moment, you know, like that was a personal thing he did in his in his space, in his home. There was something about that made me quite like I got to do this one right man.

And I'm gonna have to sing, not like I was already singing, like I'd sang that was the last track, so obviously sang all this ship and like I know I can sing like I had that You mentioned Roy. The chorus of Roy, I've had for like five years. I've wanted to write that chorus raises Bowen did the bridge the verse in the bridge, and we were packing up about to leave Nigel studio. I was having a bad day every fucking day in Nigel studio. Honestly, I was such a little bastard. But I realized I was

being a little bastard and got over it. But it was what everyone was packing up, and then I realized, oh, that fucking chorus, that's it, because the bridge was going to be the chorus. So like literally John was already packing his drums and I said, right, get back, got this idea, do this drum beat, bah blah blah. Write in about five minutes, recorded it and I sang it on the way home. So I'd written that bit, not the words, but the melody that note in baby. I

was like, that's it. Started crying and driving home, I was like, fuck God, that's I finally got that chorus in and then what's the other.

and it's honest because that's who I am. So this was about the period where I met a bunch of guys when I started cycling Willy J. Healy to be precise. One of them was Willy where you fall in love with someone in a very platonic way, but you fall in love with someone, it makes you feel great and they bring out something new in you, or they really

they reinvigorate a part of you that you've forgotten. And he's a very youthful, bright, beautiful tender man as smart and he's way better at songwriting than anyone else on now an incredible songwhere and an incredible voice, and he likes boxing. So like we just started hanging out and it's a love song about falling in love with someone and you're becoming that thing and the reference to hall of OAS's uh an ex partner in my self would

joke about it wasn't my idea, was her idea. She said that, like, you know when you've made you fucked someone for the first time, make love to someone for the first time, and the next day, like hall of Oates is playing in your head all day and you have kicking cans, like yeah, yeah, it's like it's that feeling. You get that feeling like you've just there's this whole vibrant new episode to your life because you met someone. And I like, I love that, and I think it's

it's an important love song. It's an important message to celebrate these people. I want to I want to say it like this because it's true. Men don't do this enough, you know, like just declare your love for someone because they make you a better person. There isn't a woman or a man that you're in a romantic relationship with, but you know a friend, he's just like, I fucking love this person, and that's all right. It's nothing weird about that. I don't get me wrong. Most people do.

But I like to sing a song about it because I'm a musician.

I'm no Poiro, Like the reading into that. I did wonder whether it was written in kind of the autumn of last year, as the country was sort of like responding to death of the Queen and all those kind of things, and like whether that was in your mind and how that made you feel, and whether that came out of those moments.

loveless the Tory government and the monarchy is. And it sends me into a place where I'm willing to do things should anyone step in away with my kid having a good life with love in it. And then you know, you don't have to I'm not say you know, it's like it's like assuming that you have to be religious, to fear a god, to be a good citizen. I'm not always you know, I wanted these things before. It just highlights how sad it is when you have a child.

There you become more vulnerable because you're suddenly responsible for someone else, and that vulnerability is is scary and it's infuriating, and you just suddenly realize that there's a lot, like our kids are going to have to fight for a lot.

And you know, I wanted to write love and I wanted to be love, and you know, as Bell Hooks writes, you know love is love is a verb, and you know it has facets of grace, empathy, commitment, kindness, And I think you know if you act with love and empathy, you're not You're not painting a carriage gold to carry an unelected leader down a path whilst there's foodless food banks. You're not shaking hands with net and Yahoo sanctioning or allowing a genocide in Gaza, and you're not whatever. It's

a fact. You know, you're not desperately seeking to leave a union, and you're not desperately seeking to attack and blame a group of people for anything. You're looking to come at solve a problem with empathy and grace.

what's going on. And I'm no longer barking at the tree. I'm looking at the roots. I fucking pray. I am praying that this circumstands by people. And you know what all this noise that people make around around the world is the general elections are the only place to really make a change, to start anyway. But this country and the way it's set up, you know, you've got a House of lords. That's insanity. House the Lords is insanity.

I try and explain that to an American and they look at me like and this is someone with the Senate. And lobbying is invented there, you know, lobbying, and they're looking at me like you poor bastard. Yeah, it's fact. They're inheriting and buying seats in our parliament. That's fucking corruption, right, is it not. I hope obviously, blah blah, fucking blah. I hope that it starts with the Labor government, and

I hope that that's the start of something. Unfortunately, this country always has to be on there to collapse before people really realized who used to blame. But the problem with left wing politics is, and I'm not talking about centrist left, I'm talking about proper left wing politicies. Is that's a fifty year plan, you know, And we definitely don't have that. So I don't know. I don't know, but I am hopeful, Yes, I have optimism.

in it. Do I think the music community, I mean, you do what you can do, Like, you know, in terms of the general election, like we we we tried to we were flying back to the UK and Bernie Sanders campaign asked us to play for that and we're like, we're going home, fuck and we can't afford to like stick around and like it's crazy money and then oh no, I can't remember. We just can't do it. And then

recently it was for the pro Palestine March. They asked us to play for the Corbyn around the Corbin one of the Corby speeches, and we were already in Turkey. So it's painful, like you want to do these things and it would be great. That sort of thing is that, you you know, it's the same as going on in you just add you just add feet to that and the presence is the blessing there. You know, you just got to try and add numbers so that they see you.

You know, you can't ignore you as an entity. I think you know it's about this is what I mean about algorithms and arguing in your political sense is like idols are not followed by the populace. We do not have. You know, we're not in the the world of you know, we're not played in the range. We're not played in between and deck or whatever. You know, we're not in that world. So you know, when Storms, he gets behind Corby, and that's sick because there's a huge amount of people

there that are behind Storms. Like we don't have that sense of fame. So we will try. But obviously it's just better when Adele does it, and that's what I want. I'd rather Adele was doing it than me. It's up to It's up to everyone to chip in with whatever they want or not at all. It's none of my fucking business. Do I think music can make a difference. Yes, if it allows people to connect between themselves, that's all I can do is offer a bridge of like feeling.

That's what music is. It's a universal language of feeling connection to the world, connection to other people. I hope we're giving that.

has developed and supported and surrounded the band. And I just wondered whether you had any particular stories that have come from that community, like we're talking how it's developed six seven years on that I've really touched you, that have really warmed your heart to know, like, oh, for a connection with our band, certain things have happened, people have met, They've gone to a gig where they didn't have somebody to go to a gig with before, or

whatever it might be. I just wonder if there are any particular stories that have just landed with you, with you that you've thought we're doing something significant, because without us, that thing wouldn't exist.

empathy in love. I feel that that's something going to go one way.