Sometimes I think it’s a miracle rock ‘n’ roll is alive at all. Every year, rock is written off for dead, yet among the broken dreams, a flower emerges to capture the potency, potential, danger, and energy the best rock has always offered. 

Ever since its early days, rock ‘n’ roll has been on a path to be televised, demonized, synthesized, corporatized, fossilized, compromised, gluttonized, sexualized, stigmatized, sterilized, terrorized and psychedelicized — yet, surprise, surprise, it survives. And no band now is more living proof of the cockroach-like reinvention of rock ‘n’ roll than the British provocateurs IDLES.

IDLES songs aren’t pretty or easy. They’re abrasive and heavy, but also ultimately full of hope — for ourselves, each other, and the communities around us. CRAWLER is their fourth album, and finds lead singer Joe Talbot retelling the story of his journey — and eventual recovery — from a self-created bottoming out. It was brought on by a car accident he caused during a drug-fueled spree.

It’s not an easy listen, or terribly tuneful. But it hits, and manages to make the personal feel political in ways their more sloganistic past releases sometimes didn’t. It’s less mosh pit, more cathartic release, like the way the intensity grows across the 15 times they repeat the word “damage” at the end of first single “Beachland Ballroom.” Not for the faint of heart, but the kind of record and band that’s saving rock ‘n’ roll right now.

External links

IDLES - official site