IDLES’s New LP “CRAWLER” Is an Act of Gratitude

Joe Talbot, growling lead vocalist for the British noise-rockers IDLES, knows that life can be horrible. There’s death, carnage, pain, abuse, and everything damaging and detrimental in between. But the philosophically inclined Talbot also knows there’s another side to that proverbial coin. In fact, he shrieks it on his band’s forthcoming album, CRAWLER. “In spite of it all,” Talbot sings, “life is beautiful.” But while it’s clear he wholeheartedly believes the line, it’s not one he thought up himself. It comes from the mind of Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky, who wrote it in a journal while sitting at home in his garden well aware that Joseph Stalin’s military men were headed to assassinate him with an ice pick to the head. It’s these kinds of silver-lining realizations, these kinds of hopeful observations, that make IDLES a remarkable band—and the group’s new 14-track LP is rich with them.