It takes two to tango but only one to let go
Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts
23/02/24 : TANGK - Idles
Our second visit with Idles - last time I didn't mind the music but couldn't get with the vocal style and I have absolutely no reason to assume things will be different here.
But...
...either the music is even better and the vocal style less annoying or I'm getting more tolerant in my old age - and I think we all know the latter option is very unlikely. I really didn't mind this at all - there's all sorts of interesting noises on there. It's hard to describe as well because I can't think of anything else it sounds like. So maybe just check if out if you think you don't like Idles - you may be surprised. I'm intrigued as to how I'm supposed to pronounce it though.
We're back in the usual territory of being at #1 with a new entry this week with the rest of the tope five being Paloma Faith (another new entry), Noah Kahan, The Weeknd best-of and ¥$ and we have one more new entry in the top ten for Crawlers (#7) which I listened to because I liked them at Reading and found it to be a load of fun.
Last week I said that ¥$ would be at #7, so I'll take #5 as a victory. Idles is a hard one to place - somewhere in the twenties feels about right, so let's go for #23. This week's Taylor stats are one in the top ten (1989 is REALLY sticking around!), five in the top twenty and nine in the entire chart - I've been doing this since July last year and she's only had one week where she's had less than nine albums in the chart.
Wikipedia tells us this is their fifth album - I had no idea they'd been going since 2009. It doesn't tell me how to pronounce the album name, but it does tell me it's "a onomatopoeiac coined by the band, for "the lashing way the band imagined the guitars sounding, that has grown into a sigil for living in love"" - I hope this has cleared it all up for you. I was also surprised to hear it was produced by Nigel Godrich (of Radiohead fame). The critics were generally pretty nice about it, from my place of limited knowledge it feels like Record Collector got it right with "may bring us a more compassionate, empathetic version of the band who seem to be trying to find something that resembles peace after years of tumult". What is surprising is how well it's done commercially away from these shores, including #2 in Belgium and Germany.
"Customers also listened to" Sleaford Mods, Yard Act, Frank Carter and Viagra Boys - none of whom are exactly my sort of thing. But that's what I'd have said about Idles before I listened to this, but I really didn't mind it at all - whether I ever listen to it again is uncertain, but I won't be approaching their next album with such trepidation.
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