Idles, the roar of tender revolution

We are inhabited by deficiencies. We need airways that offer us breath between puddle and puddle, between request and request from the rulers of the day to “grow their shoulders” (more?, again the same and the same?, for what?) and promises to emerge stronger from the ditches on duty (ha, ha). Last night, Idle they offered us, in their hour and a half of vehement concert at the Santana 27 hall in Bilbao, a bit of breathlessness in the suffocation, which is not little.

In ninety minutes on the clock, exquisitely fulfilling the schedule, and with absolute dynamism (there were no stoppages, despite the continuous changes of instruments caused by different tunings), Idles downloaded Non stop twenty songs.

From the beginning with “Colossus”, which opens their second album, to the closing with “Rottweiler”, which closes that same work, the five musicians made a cyclical and energetic review of their four studio albums, the most immediate, punks and canonical “Brutalism” (2017) and “Joy as an act of resistance” (2018) and their last two albums, “Ultra Mono” (2020) and “Crawler” (2021), more varied, deep (they include sequences and synthesizers that fatten up their sound).

Driven by the spectacular punch of drummer Jon Beavis (absolute exhibition of forcefulness and regularity during the 90 minutes) and the penetrating bass of Adam Devonshire and adorned by the guitars of Mark Bowen and Lee Kiernan, effective in the songs of the first two albums and more dissonant, noisy and ornamental in those of the last two, singer Joe Talbot, a monster of the stage, spat out his comforting lyrics with rage and punk power, rap cadence and more than correct phrasing (“The Beachland Ballroom”, “MTT 420 RR”…).

The public eagerly participated in a concert with the flavor of the past, and sang along to the refrains of the English group, full of punk force but far from the original nihilism of that style (“no future”) and brimming with humanism, released without pretending to be important (“I’m scum”, they sing in “I’m scum”) but aware of what is important (“if someone spoke to you as you do with yourself, they would knock their teeth out. Love yourself”, says “Television”, which also rang last night). There was talk, between jumps and sweat, of toxic masculinity, migration (impressive “Danny Nedelko” at the top of his lungs), vulnerability, compassion, care, addictions…

Idles, last night in Bilbao

For Idles, it is not about accommodating “happily” to what is sold to us as inevitable, nor is it just about escaping, but this is about changing things together, in community, but starting with oneself.

idles raised a night of pogo and hugs, and he was completely right. He offered a place in a house, his own, which allows you to fail, just as his song “Danke” promises (it was missing yesterday in a repertoire that is beginning to be difficult to manage, so, with four albums, they are left out) and said one of the models of sweatshirts for sale last night at the stand of merchandise (from boat to boat despite the prices, 30 euros for t-shirts and 45 for sweatshirts). They, at least last night in Bilbao, did not.