15 March 2024 (gig)
18 March 2024
The last time Idles played Berlin, they got a change of venue, from Columbiahalle to Tempodrom, a larger, more spacious hall.
Tonight takes things up yet another notch, as the Bristol band play their biggest standalone gig to date, on, strangely, the Ides of March.
Named after a boxer (fitting, given Idles frontman Joe Talbot's stage prowl and weave), their venue this time is an indoor arena, tucked under a sloped grass roof upon which sheep graze, next to the iconic leaning floodlights of Dynamo Berlin's former stadium. There's a lower league game on and football chants fill the warm spring air as scores of eager beanie-hatted Idles fans loiter.
They’re here for Idles’ LOVE IS THE FING tour and the band’s fifth album TANGK, produced by Nigel Godrich and Kenny Beats, as well as guitarist Mark Bowen.
The band’s new work slots into a pounding, 24 song set spanning tracks from Brutalism (2017), Joy (2018), Ultra Mono (2020) and their last album, Crawler (2021). There’s no Model Village, or Well Done, as the band continue to consign early caricature to the archive.
In-between the likes of the older Television, the brilliant I’m Scum (council house and violent) and Samaritans, there's the shuffling Jungle, bouncy and catchy Dancer, which Idles recorded with LCD Soundsystem, and the slower, trip-hop infused (they’re from Bristol, after all) POP POP POP, with its Freudenfreude line.
If Talbot’s “No god, no king, I say love is the thing” chorus on Grace, isn’t clear enough a message to deliver, calls of Viva Palestina to The Wheel’s Hallelujah refrain and a mass chant of “Great Britain’s new national anthem”, F**k the King, turn the focus well beyond this arena. Both inbetween and during songs, Talbot and Bowen call for a ceasefire in Gaza. Most of this sweaty crowd applaud and join in.
The night ends with Talbot joining drummer Jon Beavis for a raucous, extended set closer, Rottweiler. More venues across Europe and then North America await. How will their anti-monarchy messaging go down when Idles play the idyllic and tranquil Glastonbury, just a few miles from their UK home, this summer?
