Idles has shared a second single from their forthcoming new album Crawler. The upcoming release is set to arrive on 12th November via Partisan.
The new track “Car Crash” “sees the band operating free from constraints and unshackled from any notions of what an IDLES song should sound like“. It showcases frontman Joe Talbot’s own near-fatal experience behind the wheel. “It’s the horrific, comedown hangover — waking up in the morning and realising the smashes, like, what the fuck am I doing with my life?” he said in a statement.
The video that accompanies the song has been created by Matthew Cusick and edited by Idles Lee Klernan. The project began in 2001 when “Cusick took a break from painting and began digitally cataloguing car chase scenes from 20th-century American cinema as an extension of his paintings and map collages. Appropriating footage from as early as the Keystone Cops, Cusick assembled “File on Motor Transgression, 2001-2011” by condensing more than 500 car chases into a navigation of the American landscape throughout cinematic history”.
On collaborating with the band, Cusick said: “It is a gut wrenching, symbiotic conclusion to the piece. It has now what it was always missing… a killer soundtrack“.
Co-producer and guitarist Mark Bowen added: “We wanted it to be as violent as possible to reflect that event. I really wanted it to be this sonic touchstone. We recorded the drums beforehand and put them on a vinyl acetate. Whenever you replay an acetate, because it is kind of like a liquid, it degrades every time. It touches on things being transient and momentary — even a single drum hit. It’s like a memory, when the moment has passed and you deal with the repercussions over and over again, and they morph and change into something else. It’s one of the first times on an IDLES song where we used proper effects on the vocals — it was Joe going through my pedal board, so you get both clarity and degradation”. You can watch the video below.
Last night Idles appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live! performing the latest single “The Beachland Ballroom”, making their U.S late-night TV debut. “It’s the most important song on the album, really,” said Talbot.
“There’s so many bands that go through the small rooms and dream of making it into the big rooms. Being able to write a soul tune like this made me go, fuck — we’re at a place where we’re actually allowed to go to these big rooms and be creative and not just go through the motions and really appreciate what we’ve got. The song is an allegory of feeling lost and getting through it. It’s one that I really love singing.” Watch Idles performing below.
Idles new album Crawler can be pre-ordered here. The band also starts a UK tour next year, more info about the dates and venues can be found in the latest mxdwn article.
Photo credit: Press/Tom Ham
