Track Reviews // Idles - Mercedes Marxist

Single (Partisan Records, 7^th May 2019)

Since Joy as an Act of Resistance gained dominant status over 2018 hardcore positive punks Idles have been catapulted into the stratosphere. Their fiercely jubilant brand of honest hope has turned back a tide of apathy and disaffectedness for young listeners washed out in reverb and superficiality. But in a single-use plastic world of 24 hour news cycles and social media attention spans the follow-up is always gonna be tricky.

Wisely then, Idles have taken a break from touring to drop a 3 minute pipe bomb; showing the growing dexterity of their performances while sticking to the analogue punk syncopation of American greats like Fugazi in the sing-song drawl of Gogol Bordello.

The guitars cut through the mix like Husker Du and punch holes in each other or any spare beat of silence until the song boils over into crushing power chords and the kind of righteous football chant war crying that have become hallmarks of their wildly popular live sets. Like all of Idles’ best material it has a kind of despairing humour, an organic spontaneity and Joe Talabot furiously nailing every vowel to the beat before dragging it across the bloody pub floorboards.

His lyrics continue to resonate like struck metal with heat-seeking simplicity. ‘Suicides for cowards he said/While sat drinking himself to death’ is eviscerating in its summing up of the current global masculine psychodrama. It hinges the songs descent into non-verbal exhilaration, language folding into wild expression and reflecting the meaningless label in the title – Idles redoubling their determination to tightrope walk between hyper-aware mediocrity and collective conscious damnation with defiance and joy.