That was my only interaction with him. I went on tour, me and my partner had spoken about it, and we thought it would be alright â but then I turned to alcohol and drugs. Lee tells a story about their show at the O2 Arena with Foo Fighters where he met drummer Taylor Hawkins. A couple of years after his motherâs stroke his step-father passed away. âDev (Adam Devonshire, bassist) and I used to live down there,â says Joe, pointing down a street beside the building.
A lot of people miscarry without talking about it, and itâs shit. Idles are a British rock band formed in Bristol in 2009. Every day for five years.âGo back almost a decade and that flat acted as a kind of preschool for IDLES. No matter what happens weâre there for each other.âThat loss doesnât define the album, but it is one of the subjects that revolve around the master theme of vulnerability. We stop in a cafe close to Fatty and Garethâs studios, the final place IDLES would rehearse in this area alongside bands like All this stuff goes back a while, as things have been a slow-burn for IDLES. âMonday, Thursday, Sunday rehearsals. â90-year-old alcoholics at the bar, and everyone in between. âOur fans, I think they feel like they own us as a band, which is exactly what we want,â he says.
Born with a clubfoot, he had 11 operations at an early age. âThe whole reason Iâm still here is because I was able to share my emotions. To a 16-year-old you’ve just lost your mum, and she was my best mate. âI’ve been in counselling recently and I realised that from the age of 16 to 32 I felt very lonely but surrounded by very lovely human beings. It was very tough.âIt set a tone for the evening â but not a morbid one. âIt was a safe place,â he said, even if âExeter was a fishbowl full of torrid little bellends.â After studies heâd smoke three cigs on the bus, go home and watch movies. Walking away from the centre of town, our first stop, The Golden Lion, is a yellow-painted boozer with a few benches scattered out the front facing the busy main road. Idles do feel like a band reborn on the back of the debut album. Thereâs a lot of joy.During a day where we talk about some weighty subjects thereâs a lot of laughs. Brought us food to the house. It takes a few minutes for him to settle, as he, I and our photographer Dan wait for his guitarist bandmate Mark Bowen to arrive from London where he still works as a dentist – sometimes in a practice, other times in prisons. Posted by 1 year ago. Fortunately, they recognised it, rediscovered their naivety and found themselves unthinking what is was to be a band making a second album. I was a mess, and I was a bastard. Their third album, Ultra Mono, is scheduled to be released on 25 September 2020. âThereâs a sense of responsibility that goes with that.âFor an evening filled with traumatic detail, everyone left with a smile on their face. The result was a second EP called âMeatâ, followed by their debut album, âBrutalismâ couldnât have been more timely. Mark Bowen from IDLES is a dentist in Fulham, London. âIâd never written a love song, which I thought was a bit of a shame. Itâs not a burden. Itâll be a lot more rewarding in the end, but weâll probably look like Chris Martin while weâre doing it. It happens a lot. âWe want it to be a real force of change and violence but with joy as the engine instead of negative energy. But ruling over that is defiance. Itâs better.âWork on the new material started also immediately after their debut was complete. What do the bands mean for the NHS fees?
The whole point of this is that when you have a platform for art you can make a change. Itâs an album that rejects a stiff upper lip attitude; an album that says weep if you need to weep, laugh when you want to laugh. Originally emulating Gang of Four, Bloc Party and The Walkmen, this record sees the five-piece ditch their post punk trappings. A week later I discover a secret message on my recorder: Bowen makes spooky ghost noises, before Joe puts on a menacing voice: âThis is a secret message to you. Some fans just wanted a selfie but most wanted to thank him for his openness and divulge their own difficult times. At first the warm reception that LP received had them second-guessing their next move. youâre coming back!âAfter our conversation in the cafe the band walk up a steep road nearby and pose for photos with the early evening Bristol skyline in the background. I should have stayed at home and fixed with my girlfriend.âLater, Lee, Dev and Jon are sat on a grassy bank before having to go to work that evening (Lee works at a music college, Dev at a venue). âI laughed,â says Lee, although clearly not in a harsh way, but in reaction to the astonishing rawness of it. On one level, Idles are an olly-olly-olly affair: a direct band with a lot of route-one music that climaxes in massed shouted choruses. We did that for four or five years,â says Joe pausing outside the next landmark. Joeâs partner arrives having finished work for the day at the local hospital where sheâs a nurse and he puts a tender arm around her shoulders before everyone goes their separate ways.âWhat we didnât want to do is be a happy-go-lucky band that doesnât have any content,â he says before he leaves.
In their work, in their lives, at their shows. I shouldnât have gone on that tour, because something much worse could have happened.