(Planet Me)
Friday, September 14, 2018
 
IDLES Joy As An Act Of Resistance

This is the album of the year. I *never* say things like that on first listen. This isn’t first listen. This album is less than two weeks old, but I know. It’s what I’ve been hoping for in music in years. It’s smart, funny, fiercely human, joyful, and fuming at the same time. It reflects – exactly – the war that lives in my head. The music is a furious, tightly coiled spring. The band wait, they pounce, and they roar. This is the articulate sound of unheard fury in every street in the country.

Joy As An Act of Resistance is the perfect title. The album is full of joy. The world should be joyful. We should be living this life, now, at the peak of humanity ; humanity has conquered space, and has nearly defeated disease. We have the resources in this world to equalise poverty, eliminate hunger, to cure unhappiness. And so many of us are unhappy ; because it’s not fair, it’s not equal. It’s not right. And this is where the joy comes from. The news is terrible. We should be worried about everything. Joy, happiness, love, a smile – these are acts of resistance. This is the war.

Sometimes it feels like the way the world works, that we, humans, we’re just Economic Units Of Production and all joy and emotion is nothing compared to a balance sheet. And then, we get the words in the songs : all the songs come from a place of Joy. In a belief that mankind can conquer all imperfections if – IF – somehow the power was all in the right places. It’s written in every line. And whilst the songs are undoubtedly angry, at the same time, they’re also full of passion. Each song is a story, an image, a snapshot of modern life. “A dulcet man with a dulcet tone from a dulcet town and a dulcet home” sums up so much of a modern high street on a Friday night ; the electric terrifying buzz of a Saturday Night at closing time that we’ve all known.

And it’s a vulnerable album ; the lyrics are raw, and emotional : a man lost in a modern world, where we are surrounded, bombarded by conflicting messages and a confusion over what it is to be a man anymore :

“I'm lefty, I'm soft. I'm minimum wage job. I am a mongrel dog. I'm just another cog. This snowflake’s an avalanche.”

And there’s songs that cover every part of how I feel. The songs pointedly and clearly address the xenophobic post-Brexit MadMaxScape that is modern Britain – a land where we want more nurses, yet also deport them – a land where we are taught to hate ourselves to buy more things – a land where we are taught to hate everyone who isn’t quite exactly like us – a land of adequate food, low quality meat, No Deal, and stockpiled medicines - and, at the same time, that somehow all these contradictions are meant to make sense. Which they don’t. They can’t.

And the songs : they pound on a complex set of ever changing tempos and parts, all built to come to a crescendo in each song, and each song is perfectly placed next to each other. Especially the heart-rending, mid album pause of “June” which deals, brutally, with stillbirth and tragedy with the power and devastation of the most powerful poem you might have ever read. And to follow it with “Samaritans”, which addresses the way masculinity becomes a flippant prison where you aren’t meant to show your feelings as a mask is no accident. The whole album feels like the soundtrack to an exploration of the utter fucked-up-ness of modern life, and an acceptance of who we are for all our flaws. And, at the same time, that acceptance is a joy. Loving yourself is an act of joy ; this is who I am, and what I am, and that is that.

The album ends with “Rottweiler”. The final call, the final word on this album is a cry of “Unity!” – a theme that pulls through many songs on this record, the sense of unity, community, of people all in this together, united by a common experience : and of course, there’s also the joyful music, that is so furiously alive, so passionate, and so clear. This album feels like being given a pre-match pep talk by Muhammad Ali – except the match is your whole damn life, and Joy As An Act Of Resistance is a musical instruction manual on how to survive the modern world.

This is my album of the year in one of the best years for music I have ever known.


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