It’s easy to dip into hyperbole after seeing Idles play. If you want energy, rawness and showmanship from a concert, is any other band devoting this much of themselves to the live experience in 2024?
The British post-punk quintet — vocalist Joe Talbot, guitarists Mark Bowen and Lee Kiernan, bassist Adam Devonshire and drummer Jon Beavis — is a swirling mass of passion and fiery emotion, marked by a heavy rhythm section, screaming guitars and Talbot’s aggressive shouted-sung sloganeering.
They released their fifth album, “Tangk,” in February, and quickly scaled up in profile. By inviting Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich and hip-hop mastermind Kenny Beats to co-produce the record with Bowen, the team played on a deeper sonic canvas than previous albums, letting songs breathe and the hooks get funkier in ways that still felt punk, all while getting invited to play on mainstream platforms like “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.”
Toward the end of their U.S. leg touring “Tangk,” Idles performed a ferocious set Friday night at Forest Hills Stadium in Queens, N.Y. The 13,000-capacity outdoor venue, known for inspiring scores of noise complaints from neighbors, immediately started shaking when the band took to their positions for the slow, droning buildup of “Tangk” opener “Idea 01,” before ratcheting up the intensity into fan-favorite “Colossus.”
The entire show was a masterclass on stage presence, as the group’s driving rhythms allowed for controlled chaos. Talbot, nicknamed late in the show by Bowen as “the barking dog of Newport,” stalked the floor like a welterweight getting ready for one last fight, shadowboxing and mimicking jump rope to keep in the zone before he started singing. During songs, he was all motion too: swinging the mic, wrapping the cord around his arm like a street preacher, spitting between verses like he had just taken one to the chin. The long-haired Kiernan headbanged constantly, pausing only to leap into the audience to crowd surf. Furthermore, Bowen, Talbot and Kiernan danced among themselves nonstop, seemingly in peril of tripping over each other or tangling up cords. Meanwhile, Devonshire, hips continually swaying, and Beavis were the essential churning backbone, keeping order for the rest of the musicians to bounce off.
Amazingly, they remained high octane for their 24-song, two-hour show, sprinkling six “Tangk” songs into the career-spanning set. Highlights included an especially moody performance of the quiet-loud “Car Crash,” a chest-thumping rendition of Talbot’s recovery anthem “The Wheel,” the roaring “War,” and mosh-pit inspiring early single “Never Fight a Man with a Perm.”
The group’s live show is joyful, messy and feels dangerous in a way that few modern acts care to evoke. Talbot’s lyrics lend themselves to be shouted by the heaving masses, and while certain Britishisms get slightly lost in translation (it’s a bit odd to hear a swath of New Yorkers screaming in tandem about “the best way to scare a Tory,” but the message comes across), it’s mainly a righteous lefty fury. “Fuck the King,” “Fuck the Police” and “Viva Palestina” were shouted at the top of his lungs throughout the night, with Talbot introducing songs as being about addiction, the plight of immigrants, love and drugs.
Onstage, Idles felt like a powder keg ready to blow, turning a Queens audience into socially conscious soccer hooligans for the night.
The opening recently-reunited NYC mainstays The Walkmen, who, despite looking a bit grayer, sounded crisp and animated running through aughts-era indie rock anthems like “The Rat,” “Angela Surf City” and “What’s in It for Me.”
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