IDLES, politics and snowflakes
Hatred and anger are currency online, but bands like IDLES prove how important human connection is.
Words by Missy Taylor
Photos by Missy Taylor
It was 2022, and my partner bought the video game Saints Row (2022) for her PlayStation 5. I ended up playing it while she sat nearby on her PC. The game includes multiple fictional radio stations that players can put on while driving, featuring songs from real-world bands. I tuned it to Route Overdrive KFC22 103.3, which played a few bands I know of—Cage the Elephant, Modest Mouse, The 1975. I also remember it playing a song called ‘Model Village’ by IDLES. From that moment, I fell in love.
Eventually, I found their song ‘I’m Scum’, from their 2018 album Joy as an Act of Resistance. It’s become my favourite song of theirs—an anthem that helps me better express my frustrations with the world.
My ex-stepdad was a follower of right-wing politics. If he could’ve voted for Trump, he would’ve. Because his and my own beliefs were conflicting, he often called me a ‘snowflake’. But, to lead singer Joe Talbot in the song ‘I’m Scum’, ‘this snowflake’s an avalanche’.
Since their debut, IDLES has always been political. In an interview Talbot had with The Boar, Gregory Milik mentions that their debut album, Brutalism (2017), is a ‘deeply political record’ and asks Talbot if he believes that it’s important for music to play a role in political resistance. Talbot’s response is straightforward—while he does believe that music is a ‘good vehicle for political resistance ... anyone who thinks that [music can inherently change the politics of a country] can’t see through the smokescreen of how the media and the conglomerates are set up’.
‘And, through everything, art remains an act of resistance. Living is an act of resistance.’
Additionally, Talbot mentions that people can’t ‘get past algorithms these days to actually make change; you need activism’. What’s interesting about this interview is that it was published in 2018. Algorithms were always a thing, but eight years later it feels like they’re inescapable, especially on social media sites centred around curating your feed. Talbot’s statements also have renewed meaning in relation to the rise of generative AI. Music can get you groovin’, it can make you feel, it can give you ideas on how to fight back—but it sure as hell won’t change the country.
It’s you who needs to make change. It’s you who needs to stand up and say, ‘Enough is enough’.
For Talbot, the way to stay informed is through books but also through community. You need to ‘talk to each other’. He continues, saying that ‘if you’re reading newspapers and such, you’re reading opinions, but if you meet people of different cultures, places, genders, classes, races and sexualities, then you learn ... that humans are in the same wanting group’. Everyone can read Rupert Murdoch rags and assume the worst in people—that immigrants are taking your jobs and houses, that trans people are forcing HRT onto your children, and that people on Centrelink are all dole bludgers raking in millions. But when you go outside and talk to people, you realise that not everyone is out to get you. People want connection.
All of this relates to a line that Talbot sings in the song ‘Model Village’: ‘There’s a tabloid frenzy in the village (don’t read The Sun).’ The Sun is a British tabloid paper owned by News Corp, bought by Murdoch in 1969 after a buyout fight with Robert Maxwell (father of Ghislaine Maxwell).
Interestingly, even though ‘Model Village’ is the song that got me hooked on IDLES, it’s a song the band won’t perform live anymore. Talbot spoke to NME in 2021 about it, stating that ‘I’m not defensive, I’m not angry. I’m not scared anymore, and I was when I wrote that album.’
This particular statement really resonates with me. I lived with my ex-stepdad from 2009 to 2018, from the ages of 14 to 23. Those years were when I got more online and became more politically active. Barack Obama’s inauguration happened in 2009, Julia Gillard became the first female prime minister of Australia in 2010, the Coalition came into power by 2013. In 2014, a police officer killed Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. By 2016, we had the same-sex marriage plebiscite. And in 2017, Donald Trump was sworn in as the President of the United States of America.
Politics is something that I cannot get away from. I’m a writer, I’m disabled, I’m queer, I’m trans, I’m lower middle-class, I’m on Centrelink. Politics is unavoidable. And I’d fight my ex-stepdad on these things. It’s been eight years since he left. There’s still this anger inside of me, an unresolved tension. I can’t help but know that if he still lived with me, we would get into screaming matches over the current state of the world.
Since my ex-stepdad left and since COVID, I’ve learnt a lot about life and love. There is good out there. Being on your phone and doom scrolling for hours will kill you both mentally and physically. And, through everything, art remains an act of resistance. Living is an act of resistance. Like Talbot says in a 2024 interview with NME promoting their recent album Tangk, the manifesto of IDLES is about ‘human connection.’
‘You can fuckin’ blow as hard as you can and just keep screaming down the fuckin’ barrel of the gun and it ain’t gonna change shit. But if you shine and you show people compassion and you listen and you have an open heart, then maybe that connection will be made’.
I’ll use my anger where it’s needed. To fight for the rights of people both like and different to me. I’ll use that anger to connect with people, to protest, to find community and to bring strength to those who can’t. There are people out there that won’t like you for one reason or another, but frankly, who cares? It’s like IDLES says in ‘POP POP POP’: ‘Keep my people up, that’s my tool’.