Idles’ immigration reaction is clear call for compassion
On Idles’ summer single “Danny Nedelko,” singer Joe Talbot and his fellow Brits blast out a tribute to the song’s namesake, a Ukrainian immigrant who became a friend and confidant.
“My blood brother is an immigrant/ A beautiful immigrant/ My blood brother’s Freddie Mercury/ A Nigerian mother of three,” Talbot sings as the band locks into a hurtling rhythm. In the Brexit era and amid growing antiimmigrant fervor around the world, the song is a plea not just for tolerance but also empathy.
“I wanted to put across a song full of naivete and joy to resist the heavy bull---- in the right-wing press,” Talbot says. “The immigration debate misses the humanity — treating people like I wanted to be treated. It’s also a way of reminding myself of how important that person is to me, and how much we lose when we deny entry to a person like that.”
In his songs, Talbot is a man of few sharpened words. He exposes his flaws and broadcasts his weaknesses, but with a certitude that denies sentimentality. He’s the perfect singer for these times — neither flowery nor obtuse, as direct as a fist, yet vulnerable, humorous.
It enables him to take on big, thorny topics such as immigration and patriarchy with a plain-spoken urgency. Little wonder Idles titled its second album “Joy as an Act of Resistance” (Partisan).
“The title started the process,” Talbot says. “We struggled with writing until we learned to enjoy the beauty of naivete, of not overthinking.”
Talbot began pulling the band together in 2012, and overthinking was part of the process for a long time as he and Mark Bowen, Adam Devonshire, Jon Beavis and Lee Kiernan struggled to find their sound. A couple of EPs didn’t quite hit the mark, but a few moments pointed a way forward. “There were songs where we didn’t just push each other in forward motion but found ourselves immersed in energy, and we wanted to keep that,” he says. “With the live shows and recording process we found our comfort in not giving ourselves time to question, and enjoying our faults.”
The band’s 2017 debut album, “Brutalism,” established Idles as a band to be reckoned with. When Talbot’s mother died after a long illness, it focused him.
“Her death shortened my fuse,” he says. “All of a sudden, it didn’t matter what others think. We spent so long concerned what we should sound like and what we should do, we forgot the essence of what we should be about: catharsis, expressing what’s inside of you. We were constantly trying to improve as musicians, instead of as people and being some kind of catalyst for change.”
The album’s success in Britain gave Talbot a perspective on the role of art and music in his own life. “We learned that the less concerned you are about reactions, the more fluid you become,” he says. “And we found that people were responding to the honesty of it. There’s a lack of visceral energy in popular music, and we filled a gap.”
“There is a massive feeling of dislocation in both our countries and polarizing politics,” the singer says. “When I look at post-Brexit Britain, I see friends of mine on the left just shouting at people on the right instead of having mature discussion about where the fear, the anger are coming from. It’s important for us, with a slightly bigger platform, to help open up that discussion. We started the band as a subversive act, because we wanted to inject compassion back into music. If you preach, you won’t be heard. If you’re willing to be vulnerable, that’s when the conversation can start.”