Ellie’s Hang out

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The fifth studio album by British rock group Idles, Tangk, was made available through Partisan Records on February 16, 2024. Producers Nigel Godrich, Kenny Beats, and Mark Bowen of the Idles worked on it. Critics praised it and it was marketed with the tracks “Dancer,” “Grace,” and “Gift Horse.”

To announce this album, Idles on instagram wrote 

“TANGK. I needed love. So I made it. I gave love out to the world and it feels like magic. This is our album of gratitude and power. All love songs. All is love.

The new album out 16th February 2024. Pre-order now via the lingk in bio.

Dancer is the violence that comes from the pounding heart of the dancefloor and rushes through your body and gives you life from music, from love and from you – watch the music video for “Dancer” over on our YouTube now.” 

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It didn’t seem very possible that Idles would put out a love songs album, especially with the title Tangk, which is an onomatopoeic attempt to convey the intensity of the band’s sound. 

And at present, here we are with songs like “Gratitude and Grace,” which are ironically titled. Equally  tributes to the delights of parenthood, a fresh start, freudenfreude, or the enjoyment of others’ successes, and strong fraternal bonds, the latter of which is eloquently compared to the sound of “Hall & Oates… playing in my heart.” The term “beautiful” could be unexpectedly added to the tracks Grace and A Gospel. The former has a magnificent melody, delivered by Talbot in a damaged coo, while the latter has a persistent piano line, softly sung vocals, and samples of both pizzicato and sweeping strings. Talbot sings, “Joy on joy, cheerleader, happy boy,” on Pop Pop Pop, using lyrics that, at the time, didn’t seem like they would come out of his mouth—at least not without a good helping of sarcasm.

is a stronger album than the previous one, managing to achieve an even more drastic change in tone (Crawler focused on self-lacerating portrayals of Talbot’s drug difficulties) without weakening the raw intensity of Idles. It’s full of clever, captivating ideas, like Roy’s rackety, clattering take on a soul ballad, Pop Pop Pop’s eerie buzzes and feedback drones, Dancer’s bewilderingly light-yet-heavy take on post-punk funk with the LCD Soundsystem’s assistance, and the closing Monolith’s eerie echo of Julee Cruise’s atmospheric 1990 hit Falling.

There are so many clever and captivating concepts that the tunes that feel most like Idles’ previous style are the least successful. Though the words are very literal and the garage-rock backdrop is monotonous, the sentiment behind Hall & Oates is endearing: “Word to your mother: I really, really love my brother.” Talbot excels at surreptitiously inciting a pro-Republican sentiment in Gift Horse, a song purportedly about his daughter, especially in the line “Fuck the king! She’s the king,” or capturing the seconds before that a potential romance becomes real on Dancer: “Brush hands … my breath moves your hair … I can taste the mood in my mouth.” 

Tangk feels like an unexpected record, which may tell something about how expectations have been lowered in a music landscape that is becoming more and more dominated by carefully crafted playlists that stick to your interests and algorithms designed to have you listen to more of the same. Alternatively, it might convey a message about undervaluing Idles themselves, who, to be true, always looked more inclined to succumb to the contradictions at their core than to grow; creating strong, angry music about “impotent male rage” as Talbot described it, is a precarious balancing act that is prone to failure and misinterpretation. While not everything on Tangk works, the great majority of it does so with an urgency that entices you to embrace its upbeat message—good reason to indulge in some freudenfreude.

SO…this is where we part ways. I hope you enjoyed this piece.

What did you think about this? Have you listened yet? If so what did you think. Let me know in the comments below!

-Ellie<3