Joe Talbot of IDLES is the latest musician who will be appearing on the BBC’s CBeebies program to read a bedtime story to children. He will read Under the Love Umbrella written by Davina Bell with illustrations by Alison Colpoys.
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The book follows four children as they attempt to navigate the joys and difficulties of the world while under their love umbrellas. This is an appropriate book for the IDLES frontman, as the band released their most love-forward and open-hearted album recently, titled TANGK.
For U.K. IDLES fans with kids of their own, Talbot’s story episode will air tonight (February 20) at 6:50 GMT on CBeebies and BBC iPlayer. Talbot released a statement about the reading, writing, “It’s an honour to announce that I am reading a CBeebies Bedtime Story.” He continued, “I can NOT express how much I love reading to my kid so this was a welcome twist in an already beautiful career. All love.”
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IDLES Release New Album TANGK, Showcasing the Various Facets of Love
IDLES’ new album has taken the band to a new place where love reigns. Joe Talbot makes unconventional love front and center, singing about “empathy, patience, honesty, communion, hard work, recovery, [and] forgiveness,” as he told NME prior to the release.
“That’s what I wrote about. I’m still there,” he told the outlet. “I’m still going to need to go through it, and I’m still very much interested in writing about love forevermore. I find it fascinating and empowering.”
IDLES’ past albums have been focused on politics, tragedy, anger, and suffering, and while the sound on TANGK is the band’s classic fare, there’s a lightness to it that their previous work didn’t possess. That’s the love, the healing factor that made IDLES the most vulnerable they’ve been in a while, but in a positive way. It’s vulnerability that feels good instead of scary.
According to Talbot, this fascination with love has stemmed partially from being a father. He explained that it has allowed him to “go through things with grace, be delicate and to celebrate the small beautiful things that you can overlook so easily if you’re impatient with the world, you miss out on a lot of tiny details that will make your day. It’s got to come out in my art, because that’s how I am.”
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