Lunch this Friday Junior with Idles, recorded live at Pinkpop 2026 on June 21 by the venerable VPRO in Hilversum.
After spending eight years honing their live performances, Idles released their debut album, Brutalism, in 2017 to critical acclaim.Their second album, Joy as an Act of Resistance (2018), increased their exposure significantly, and was followed by their first UK number one album, Ultra Mono, in 2020.
The band released their fourth album, Crawler, in 2021. Tangk, their fifth studio album, was released in 2024 and became their second to reach number one in the UK. In 2025, the band provided the film score to Darren Aronofsky‘s feature film, Caught Stealing.
Idles have been described as a “post-Brexit” political rock band. Their songs include political messages on a diverse range of topics including feminism, mass media and immigration. British newspaper The Guardian wrote in 2024 that “the subjects the band sparred with along the way ranged from white privilege to Brexit to immigration to class, with a special wallop reserved for the crueler aspects of traditional masculinity“.
English punk duo Bob Vylan criticized Idles in June 2020, accusing them of neglecting to comment on the murder of George Floyd, and alleged that this was for commercial reasons. Idles responded by saying that they took time to comment on the murder of Floyd because “there was a lot of virtue-signalling and we wanted to make sure that anything we contributed was going to be [helpful]”. Bob Vylan again criticised the band a month into the Gaza war for not speaking about the Palestinian cause despite being left-wing. Subsequently, Joe Talbot voiced support for Palestinians at the launch show for the album Tangk, by changing lyrics to include references to Palestine, while guitarist Mark Bowen led chants of “ceasefire now”. The band have continued to speak about the topic, including during their set at the 2024 Glastonbury Festival.
For those of you who think Politics in Music is a relatively new thing, I hate to break it to you, but Music is often a rallying cry and it’s a very powerful tool, when put in the right hands, moves mountains. And it has for a few thousand years.
Crank it up and find out.
