IDLES

0:06Pushkin. This is an iHeart Podcast. In today's super competitive business environment, the edge goes to those who push harder, move faster, and level up every tool in their arsenal. T-Mobile knows all about that. They're now the best network, according to the experts at Ooclas Speedtest. And they're using that network to launch Supermobile, the first and only business plan to combine intelligent performance, built-in security, and seamless satellite coverage. That's your business, Supercharged. Learn more at supermobile.com. Seamless coverage with compatible devices in most outdoor areas in the U.S.

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1:29Try Claude for free at Claude.ai slash brokenrecord. Lexus is a company that believes in the importance of setting a standard, which I can appreciate as someone who holds themselves to lofty if not ridiculous standards, especially with the car I drive. The standard Lexus has set for themselves is to experience amazing. Lexus measures success by the feeling and emotions evoked in a driver, like exhilaration and joy. Amazing can only be achieved by knowing people on a deeper level. The standard of amazing results in a feeling in drivers that their car was built in anticipation of them. Machines that make you feel more human.

2:06Because a car that doesn't make you feel something is a car that stops short of amazing. Experience amazing at your Lexus dealer. The British band Idols has released five albums in only seven years, starting with their critically acclaimed debut album, Brutalism, in 2017. The band's been growing steadily ever since with their bombastic sound that brilliantly balances joy, chaos, and an often critical take on the powers that be. The Five Piece Band's lead singer, Joe Talbot, has always channeled his personal pain as well as his dissatisfaction with Britain's ruling class into his songwriting. Mark Bowen, Idol's guitarist and producer, serves as Joe's primary musical partner in the band.

2:48They both bring a love of hip-hop and old-school soul and R &B to the mix, along with UK techno and house music. All of these influences can be heard on their latest album, Tank, a project produced by Mark Bowen, our friend Kenny Beats, and Radiohead's Nigel Godrich. On today's episode, I talked to Joe Talbot and Mark Bowen from the green room of The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon about their tumultuous creative partnership. They also explain how Mark helps temper Joe's sometimes passionate rage, and Joe breaks down why he'll forever despise England's monarchy. This is Broken Record. Line of notes for the digital age.

3:29I'm Justin Richmond. Here's my conversation with Joe Talbot and Mark Bowen of Idols. Thank you for doing this. Thank you for having us. No, man. I mean, you guys are backstage at Jimmy Fallon right now. I don't know how you guys keep it together. I can hardly do one thing in a day. You guys must be doing, you know, a million things. It's crazy. I mean, it comes with a sense of gratitude. Like, we've been fucking 15 years ago. like crappy sound engineers would give us shit for turning up early do you know what i mean and when we're all working 50 60 hour weeks and then we turn up get paid 50 bucks for a show and some warm beers and then drive for four hours home uh to play to 10 people but we knew the value of that we knew the experience and we knew how special the learning curve was so when we're here and we're given opportunities, we take them because that's a fucking gift.

4:28When you have a platform, whether you're lucky or not, and there's a lot of entitled people in our industry, but when you're gifted a platform, that is a beautiful opportunity to challenge yourself and give the audience back the energy they've given you by being present and fucking vital and full of life because you only get one and it's magic. Is it weird to see the audience get bigger and bigger and more like ardent fans? And I mean, I don't know. It's got to be insane. You get what you build, man. Like we wrote a dialogue with our music that was a continual growth. There's no surprises. We know what's happening and we know what we've made and we know what our audience is building.

5:16They've helped us from the start. So we've been carrying each other from 2011. and like there's no surprises you get what you work for i love how self-assured that answer is you know what i mean that you guys kind of know what you put out there and it really listening to the new record you know as the records have come out it seems like you guys are pretty self-contained like from the jump you guys knew what you wanted to say what you wanted to do how you wanted to present it even even though i've seen the changes like every album sounds or feels very different every album is a really strong statement yeah i mean that's definitely our biggest kind of mo as creators is that we're very much driven by our intent and our intentions you know in in the music and then they're kind of creative with joe's design and stuff like that it's all very much there from the outset it's not you know about jamming and you know exploring things in that way it's about how do we represent what we're intended here it's not you know stumbling upon something so yeah it's a it's a big thing in this band you know the title always comes first the artwork often follows soon after and then it's like conversations around that and it's about kind of like joe expressing what he meant when he gave that title and then we talk all about that and talk kind of about maybe sometimes like what the song is going to be about or what the kind of music's going to be about but you don't really have lyrics or music at that point.

6:47No, no, no. We don't have anything. It's all dealing in abstraction. And I think that dealing in the abstract is why we write the music first, always. Because it's easy to translate the abstract into something abstract. And then it's about you translating that into word. Yeah. I mean, the whole purpose of every album is, you know, life is abstract. There's no actual rules. the whole point of philosophy if you look at Plato's Republic that's just creating structures that are imagined in order to understand the socio-political like narrative that goes on and how people are trying to find purpose and meaning to move forward and that's what art is art is the bridge of existence it allows you a sense of purpose and where you're at right there and the more you understand your momentary purpose, the more you can move forward with vigour and understanding and more purpose.

7:47So every album is about the human condition and either how I'm affected by socioeconomic situations or relationships or whatever it is. I put that in, I document it, but that always comes from the present thing that's most on my mind. I already know what the next album is going to be about and what it's called. And with each one, Bowen then takes my very small thing, because I don't want to overwhelm his shit with my ego. Because it's not just about my ego, it's about some sort of landscape that we can make brilliant music on. So I just go, well, this is the kind of thing I'm going to be talking about, but I don't have any lyrics and I won't force anything.

8:31But this is what I'm interested in thematically. And then he goes, okay. And then he puts color to that and he puts, you know, some terra firma down. Some strong terra firma. Yeah, believe. And then like, and once that's all done, then I sing on top. But it has to be done. Does the color that Mark comes up with in the rest of the band, does that help you sort of hone you in on what you want to talk about? Well, it's Bowen and I that writes the music. So it's kind of like just pushing, pulling together. because he's a very philosophically and just emotional practice, very different to me. So between us, we have this really beautiful push and pull creatively that allows me a new perspective.

9:16Just then, I just wanted to smash the room up, and I had to talk to Byron. I'd be like, what do I punch? And he's like, well, how about you do this? And I'm like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, of course. He's my guy. And it's because he's the opposite to me. So we understand that to create parameters within an album, it has to be out of boundaries. Create the boundaries, work within them, and you'll flourish. I mean, it's like, it's always a strict, if I'm like, no, that's not Joy as an act of resistance enough. No, no, no, no, no. It's not like that. It's like, this is where I'm at. And that's a conversation.

9:54And I think that's why our music very much sounds like an insular entity is because we allow each other to breathe. We are all five of us. Obviously, the boys write shit as well. It's not just me and him, but it's mostly us. We allow all five of us to breathe within a parameter, but we have to have those parameters. That's the best way of creating something. I think creative thinking comes from problem solving. And it's good to have that, like, do whatever you want, but you can only use the color blue. And you're like, oh, that's sick. okay whereas if you're like do whatever you want you're like uh okay it's a little intimidating yeah yeah oh it's just a little flat like what's what's the challenge in that you're like doing anything that's not how life works life doesn't go yeah go ahead we know how privileged we are and we use self-privilege that there are people that the most brilliant and the most beautiful art comes from those voices that have a sense of tumultuous fire they have to fight against something whether it's oppression depression love fucking civil wars genocide whatever it is there's things under there like that's when the voices are most resonant i just think yeah you set yourself the boundaries and you set yourself the parameters to flourish obviously like to different degrees i'm not comparing myself to fucking billy holiday do you know what i mean but i've been through some horrible shit and i'm allowing my traumas in in order to make a more brilliant picture mark what's your sense of your guys's relationship is it similar yeah i mean it's it's tumultuous but that's good that's that's where we get you know out of the the rumble you know we start to move the earth around us the water starts to flow and i think that's it it's like we're just so different creatively as well and it's useful and hard as well you know like for two people that are so as individuals so strong in their feelings about their creativity and about their creative output it would it would almost suit us better to be auteurs and to be on our own you know just having people that are like yes around us they'll all have to happen but it wouldn't have the same impact it wouldn't work it would be too self self-serving and self-immolating as well because it's like you know joe's approach needs my touch and my and my approach needs joe's touch to become full to become complete to become become resonant in that intention as well i think that you know you can have too down the line or too abstract too like you know flourishy or or kind of a coming from a very different perspective so i think it i think it requires that for idols to be a thing but probably more generally too i mean i think that's the in you know the year 2024 it's like partnerships groups bands are rarer and rarer but you kind of you look back over all of the best music came from on some level a partnership you know off the walls a solo record but that's a partnership with him and Quincy and yeah there's always got to be something to sort of rein you in or something to play off of you know I think it's the play off of I think it's also because like when you're creating art you're creating something from your perspective to be observed from a from a different perspective so I guess it's useful at that at that point of creation for the art to then be informed by something from a different perspective because it allows the best of a singularity because there is no singularity there's no there's no truth yeah i'm all for like there are there are things that are created like nick drake pink moon that's just him on his own entirely i mean maybe there's an engineer and a producer that but i think you can get magic from anywhere some people are completely introverted i think brian and i are i'm i'm definitely half half introvert extrovert like i need time on my to process but we process very differently i think we just learn democratically and you know people forget democracies need leaders so like you know we're just we're taking us a few albums but now we're at a point where it's like this is your tune man i'm just gonna sing you crack on i'm like i'm fucking ready this is beautiful and that that's a real thing as well that we've kind of learned as we've gone along is the idea of service you know we've learned more about kind of serving the song as we write, but also service to each other.

14:38You know, there's times where, especially when you're dealing with Joe's lyrics and his vocal approach, you know, sometimes it's not what I've been expecting or would have wanted, but you can see that there's something that you needed to get out. And it's like, actually, yeah, you're right. This doesn't need my two cents right now. And that happened with me with gospel. It ended up getting cut with nothing to do with me. with a piano there was parts where it was just short I was unsure about the landscape because it's very you it was you there was a different version of a gospel a song on the new record well I mean it's all there it's just like restructured a bit as in there was something taken out so it just happens once but like that's it it's not like crazy but I was just like I felt how important it was to Bo and how amazing it was so I was just like even though I you know it got cut after your discussion with Nigel right yeah um it wasn't like my input but I felt that I was like I don't but I knew there's his but also the other thing was that whenever I showed it to you you were like oh that's the verse and I was like no stop I didn't know what bit was the verse and what bit was the chorus in my head and whatever you said it was i was like that's not it but then it has to be it doesn't matter it was the thing about gospels it's just one big thing i'm glad you guys are sometimes confused by your song structures too because i was about to bring that up about one of the new songs i'm often i don't care but if i listen back and trying to think well what's the verse what's the course what's the pre-course it's like oh i don't actually i don't know like i have no yeah i think i think especially on this one it was about like you know one of the biggest drivers that we've not actually spoken about that much actually in press on this was like when we started out of this album the things that we were listening to most and the things we were leaning on most was 50s and 60s pop music and cool and that's really informed it you know Roy is called Roy because I was trying to ape a Roy Overson song at the time beautiful song Jesus Christ I mean that was something that song's probably a perfect example of us to like not compromising what's the word colliding so i had this chorus it was like a lee moses chorus that i wanted to write for like what two three years and yeah it's not the one it's not the one and bowen had this like the verse and the bridge and the bridge was the chorus and i was writing it with my friend like trying to write it at home it's the only thing i tried to write at home and i was like everything i'm writing isn't the chorus but it works and is sick and that's what is on the album and then we were in the studio and we were packing down the drugs were packed away it was only me bowen and john in the studio with nigel and miko and like in london and i was like fuck it's the lee moses chorus and then i wrote the drum beat in what about a minute yeah i was like and john was like oh shit okay okay and then like i wrote all the fills got it down in like probably five minutes recorded but I was like, Brian, would you reckon?

17:53We both were like four, let's do yeah, organ, I was like organ line four chords and then we both, almost exactly the same time, sang the same notes, progression. And we were like, that's it, that's the fucking one. And like, you know, it wrote itself in like a minute, like it just and that's how 50s pop should be that like soul like 60s soul it's like that shit was natural and like so it's called soul music because it's the most humane fucking element of music it's like well of course that's it it sounds easy to write because it's so fucking innate in the human condition to listen to oates reading or nina simone or fucking even like the flamingos and shit like that.

18:41It just feels like you're being spoken to and you're heard. And when you feel heard, it just, it feels like you're a limb. And like, that's what, that's what I want from pop music. That's what I want from soul music. That's why, you know, you get all these, I'll play my dad, Frank Ocean Ivy. And he's like, all right, I get it. I get it. You know, but you would. No one could be like, what's this shit? Yeah. And like, you hear the soul, you know it's soul you feel the soul fuck everyone else and like we were trying to connect that that's what we wanted when i said i want to make people dance it's about the magic of music that you get when you allow it in but you you can only allow it in if the the message is portrayed in a way that allows you to feel open you know and that's you know a fable of the sun and the moon if you just shine you open that person up if you blow hard and you get aggressive and you're trying to come on just join us it's like it doesn't allow a sense of dialogue so like it was all these things that we were practicing and that 50s pop thing was the first thing that really melded us together with purpose and then next thing i know he's writing fucking all sorts of shit we're taking a break and then coming back with more of my conversation with joe talbot and mark bowen of idols in today's super competitive business environment the edge goes to those who push harder, move faster, and level up every tool in their arsenal.

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23:28Find the one with BetterHelp. Our listeners get 10 % off their first month at BetterHelp.com slash broken. That's BetterHelp.com slash broken. We're back with Joe and Mark of Idols. So Roy became like the kind of like the lead off in a sense. That was the thing that kind of made it all come together. That was the only thing that we connected on, all of us. Gotcha. Completing something that we're all like, that's it. Everything else was parts. We came to the studio in France with 17 parts with like two or maybe three instruments on, but like a verse and that's it. So we had an album to it, we had nothing.

24:06Yeah, that was it. And that was when the idea of the 50 pop thing became slightly more abstract. It was more just about tone and that sense, that untenable thing that you can't really put a name to. And then it was about being playful with structure and playful with choosing your moments. I think another big moment on the album was the instrumental end section of Pop, Pop, Pop. I have that highlighted to ask you, what is the hook? It's like there's sunbeams of sunbeams, and then there's the gold sugar part, and then it goes back to sunbeams. What's going on here? Yeah, I mean, it happens twice in really quick succession and then one time at the end.

24:47And it's like, that song was really kind of like, very much for us. It was like, it was so abstract the whole way through, I think. I mean, it was, it came from my idea. I had, I had the beat in mind for quite a while again. And like, it came from like UK Garage and Mika Levi, Mika Chew and the Shapes, which is like real grimy pop act that kind of crossed the line between sometimes grime, sometimes pop, sometimes indie, sometimes punk. Like they did whatever the fuck and it always sounded infectious, danceable. And I was like that. And then my space, what do you call it? Like their description genre description was pop, pop, pop.

25:33Oh sick. Cause it was kind of like - I didn't know that's where it came from. Yeah. Yeah. So like basically there was just referencing Garage at the time, which you know, everyone had the gun fingers. I didn't obviously. I'm talking about like the act like in in the garage scene in Manchester in London and Birmingham you know there was it was a real heavy gun crime in those areas and it was a very beautiful community of people that made something great out of serious deprivation at the time there was also a lot of bullshit you know as always with the racist media attaching gun crime to garage it was like but the gun finger thing was a real thing so I always thought it was kind of a reference to that because some of their shit, the beats they used were kind of grime beats.

26:12Anyway, fast forward and I had this beat that kind of felt like because of the nature of sick beats, you change it from 120 to 140 to 160 to 180, you've just gone through techno, garage, house, drum and bass, you know, and all those things, you put that beat on no matter what the speed everyone's on that fucking dance floor and i wanted a beat that you can do that with i mean i'm guessing it's probably what like 115 or something one two three one two three okay so yeah it's techno beat but it's got that kind of push and pull swing so it's like this was in our head wasn't it yeah and then like i started playing the thing and then bone took over because i was playing this bass line on that an open bodied bass so i started feeding back like fuck on this pokey amp so brian was like play that bass line but like this and obviously i don't know it's played use feedback and shit that's both things so he just finessed it it sounded sick it was that thing it basically he was he was playing it and you heard the the original note and then the feedback was creating a harmonic but because it was a because it was a hollow body you still had the original note in there as well so it made this chord and i was like oh can you did you change the feedback tone?

27:34And Joe was like I could keep hitting this single note for what I've found. So I went over and then we were like walking around and I was like trying to find I was like where's the next note in the sequence? Where is it? Where is it? Where is it? We find it and it was like oh shit we got it and we got the we got the sequence in order. And then that was it then we fucking it didn't sound like but Bowen added the chords later on on the on the prophet it was for me finesse the whole tune. But like in between that and that, Kenny and I are in a studio next door to these guys in France. Kenny Beetz.

28:08Yeah, boy. I texted him yesterday that Roy was my shit. I was like, yo, Roy is crazy. And he's like, glad you like it. I don't know if he worked on that one or not. He worked on everything. Yeah, yeah, he was there with us the whole time. So I was in there and I was like, I was like, I started going in hard. Kenny was like, nah, this ain't that, man. What are you doing? I was like, okay. And then, you know, Kenny's got this amazing way of just like, he's very intuitive and he understands the person as a musician. So what I mean by that is any person can sing, but a musician understands how to create a dialect of you outwardly.

28:51So you have an internalized group of masks that are all you. They're all true, but they come in cadence. They come in intonation. they come in uh timbre whatever it is tone you can use that to truly portray your person who you really are and like that comes from somewhere within that you learn you have to have that openness with yourself and try new shit to you like that is that's it that was me when i was 12 and that's how i want to sing on this tune i listen this song reminds me of the cordets and And that was a time of innocence. I'm going to sing with that innocent 12-year-old voice because that's what this song is.

29:35And that's who I am on this song. But you need someone as incredible as Kenny Beats who puts you in there. He goes, think about where you are right now. Think about who you are. Remember when you told me that thing six months ago about your mother that day and you said that thing? That's you right now, go. And you'd be like, that's it. It brings out that thing in you. And that's the voice. but that's the difference between a musician and a karaoke thing is that you can easily I was doing it the other day we covered the Walkman and I was I just basically was trying it sounded like I was trying to sing like Hamilton Lighthouser obviously that guy is a much better voice than me and I reined it in but I knew I had Kenny in my head like what you doing and I was like okay what will Kenny do you know you have to find why you want to sing that song and then you portray that with your skill set right that's great I mean, that's beautiful.

30:29I mean, back to the 50s and 60s point, it's like, how many times did artists do? I mean, there weren't covers, but like versions of things. And they weren't covers because they didn't just like ape whatever the... I mean, sometimes they did, but a lot of the great, you know, Aretha's respect, her version versus Otis's. It's like, they're both beautiful, but Aretha clearly had a vision of herself for that song, you know? It wasn't just, let's do what Otis did, you know? and it's also like if you go back to the early first you like uk and us top tens there would be three versions of the same song in the top 10 yeah that's hilarious it's fucking wild but that's it like good example i thought that a change gonna come was by otis redding i didn't realize it was sam cook's until like much later and like i was like does that mean in my head that otis owns it because it's the one that I believe in but like the context of Sam Cooke and the reason why he wrote it and the bravery it took for him to do that it's insane yeah like if you put that in context of the pop machine then and how racist it was yeah the bravery is untouchable but that I'm like this besides the point oh it's his version is the one because I it's this what I learned it to be and like i think it's like if that that's a sense of ownership that like if i own the walkman's song and make it mine because i mean it it's not my writing but if i mean it then it's it's it's as beautiful yeah you know i agree i wish that way of thinking was a little more prevalent in music because it's like i mean why not pull from other things you know like or make a song yours like that kind of adding that kind of variety back into music would help make it in my view more interesting there's issues there though like if you like i mean how many writers did harry stiles have on that album like and you get credit on all of it i don't know how much he wrote i'm not criticizing the guy obviously like i'm not gonna lie i like harry stiles's music but like obviously had lots of writers on that and i don't know whether i want to know that or I don't.

32:38I think if I thought that Harry Styles wrote it all, I'd enjoy it even more. Yeah. Not all of it. I just like his singles. Some of them are really good pop songs. I think knowing that an artist has... Frank Ocean is a great example. How many producers does he work with? And it's still incredible to me. So I guess it's about kudos as well. I think the less I know, the better when it comes to that stuff. I think you know That's it If you ignore all the bullshit And the noise around The song It's a good song Because one of the things I fucking hate Are these gatekeeping pricks In music That think that you're not Allowed to like something Because it's like Up in the pop machine Or You know what I mean Like I've got no time for that shit Yeah I think a good song's a good song The less I know the better Because I'm a judgmental prick It's good to know about It's a good thing to know about yourself as you move through the world.

33:37I appreciate your free therapy, Matt. But that's it. The mystery is key. I think especially since becoming musicians full time as a producer, you kind of look behind the wizard's curtain and it does dissolve away some of the mystery. And I'm not as enthusiastic about other people's music anymore as I once was because I've lost some of the sense of mystery. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Has it made making your music less fun in a way too or no? No, no, not at all. That's the thing. It's not added to that experience because I've got more control to allow the chaos to happen. You know, we're not sat behind a producer who's in front of us and they're in charge of all this stuff.

34:28and they're gatekeeping some of the information and some of the way we could go about stuff. Now I'm stood up there and I'm going, nah, or, you know, let's do this. Like that was the big thing, move on this album was about, well, we've done it before in the past and this isn't a negative thing, this is just what happens with bands, especially when they don't know a lot about production, is you bring the music, it guides the production, but it's you're never able to completely 100 % get what you were trying to guide because there's a confluence through the producer to go through and what I wanted on this one was I wanted the production to inform the writing so that it was all unified so that's why you know like on Pop Pop we were just talking about one of the reasons that song is so successful in that achievement around the UK garage kind of like aspect of it is because it's on a tape loop and because the tape loop because you're only hearing four snares ever those snares on repeat it becomes a drum machine it becomes that that thing that you can catch on to you know what's coming up next you do this repeated rhythm thing but even further down the line and it's like yes no I can hear when that's happening in other people's music and you're like you know it's kind of like why is that so cool and Now I know why it's so cool.

35:49That kind of removes some of the mystery, but it also kind of adds another tool to the expression. Yeah. Whereas before we were like, we got so close with that, but it's not it. Now we're like, we got it. We've got it. We've got the thing we're setting out to do. I imagine working with Nigel Godrich too, was like a big aid in that way, right? Like in terms of creating a more organic process between the writing and the production and all that. Kenny, having both Kenny and Nigel involved. yeah very much so absolutely yeah the cool thing about working with Nigel is that it's again coming back to that 50s and 60s pop stuff there is nothing that Nigel Godrich does I mean he likes to keep the mystery alive he doesn't like talking about his process too much but there is nothing that Nigel Godrich does that people weren't doing in the 60s it's just a taste thing it's all tape it's all this old crappy outboard stuff that's broken it's all working around the restrictions of what you have to hand.

36:47That's what I love. And I think that's very rare these days because we've all got access to everything. You've got Splice, you've got all your loop banks, you've got any kind of process that you want to hand. You can just download the VST and away you go. You've got any kind of processing that you want. And you're losing the restriction that creates creativity and you're losing the restriction that allows you to relinquish some of the control because you're like, well, this is the way that it sounds going through this. Great. You know, like once you get into certain places and you find that little patch, that little thing, you know, like a reverb or something like that, that just that'll inform the sound of the rest of the album.

37:36As long as there's a drum going there or something else in the background, the vocals splashing around, it'll feel like the album. so that was cool that was really cool he challenged us all in the right way I found it very difficult at the start but he was very patient and insightful he was intent on making us as accomplished and brilliant as possible and that meant being uncomfortable and challenged and he is forthright in making the best of a song and an album as Kenny is. And he worked us and he worked us brilliantly. And I'm very fucking grateful that he allowed us the opportunity to make something great.

38:24Because, you know, it's a steep learning curve keeping up with Nigel Goderich and Kenny Beats. It's not that fucking around time. It's about learning. And I'm very grateful that they were also willing to learn. And I hope we can continue for at least one more album. If you're listening, Nigel, I'm fucking coming for you, boy. I'm sure he loves to hear that.

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