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If 2018 was a year in which political events seemed as if they were coming to an increasingly perilous head, then here was the response: a sorely needed state-of-the-nation address of the kind it was assumed British guitar bands were no longer capable of writing. Brexit, immigration, rape culture, the boarding up of high street shops … listening to Joy As An Act of Resistance often feels like purging yourself of the year’s toxicity in one pent-up blizzard of drums and guitar.
Addressing politics in pop is supposed to be a tricky balancing act, yet Idles frontman Joe Talbot charges across the tightrope in heavy boots, screaming in the face of the farce unfolding around him. There is untrammelled aggression in his voice, a directness that leaves spittle on your cheeks, but it is humour, not anger, that he uses as his most devastating weapon.
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On Never Fight a Man With a Perm, he mocks a coked-up, white-shirted Neanderthal: “You look like a walking thyroid / You’re not a man, you’re a gland / You’re one big neck with sausage hands.” I’m Scum bounces along like London’s Calling-era Clash before comically ripping off the Prodigy’s Firestarter (“I am procrastinator / I over-tip the waiter”).
Preview, buy and download high-quality music downloads of Joy as an Act of Resistance. By Idles from 7digital Canada - We have over 30 million high quality tracks in our store. I just took Brutalism at face value, so I never felt that disconnect. But that's interesting to know though, thanks. I still think it works perfectly as a thesis statement for that album though, and in that sense Joy as an Act of Resistance is totally in line with it.
Beneath the rage and the humour, though, lie real human emotions: vulnerability, comradeship, warmth. Joy As An Act of Resistance is an album of personal, as well as political, anguish. Just as the band’s debut, Brutalism, was inspired by the death of Talbot’s mother – he had been her carer, and became increasingly enraged at NHS cuts in the age of austerity – this follow-up sees Talbot delving into his relationship with his father (Colossus), his complex struggle with masculinity (Samaritans) and, on the funereally paced June, his memories of his daughter Agatha, who died during birth: “Dreams can be so cruel sometimes / I swear I kissed your crying eyes,” Talbot sings, although really it is more a protracted wail of grief, uncomfortable to listen to, let alone deliver. “A stillborn was still born / I am a father.”
Difficult as the subject matter could be, Joy As An Act of Resistance never feels suffocating. Whenever you feel you are gasping for air, a huge chorus or a burst of snarling wit comes along to puncture the gloom. The “joy” of the title might at first seem like yet another joke, but for all the bleakness, this is a cathartic and enlivening album.
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“I’m like Stone Cold Steve Austin / I put homophobes in coffins,” snarls Talbot during the coda of the epic, Swans-esque opener Colossus. Television is a blast of positivity for anyone plagued by self-doubt, somehow making the most aggressive of acts feel like an arm around the shoulder: “If someone talked to you / The way you talked to you / I’d put their teeth through.”
For all its darkness, this is an album about survival, of headbanging through the pain, of turning your most vulnerable moments into your greatest strengths. Perhaps more than any other album this year, it feels like something to rally around.