IDLES have produced a slew of announcements recently, among which are a new single, titled “Dancer,” as well as a new full-length album. TANGK, due out on February 16, 2024, is the first album since Grammy-nominated CRAWLER from 2021. They provided the track list for the new album, along with a video for “Dancer.”
Videos by American Songwriter
According to singer Joe Talbot via X, TANGK will be an album of love songs. It may not be a coincidence, then, that the album comes out two days after Valentine’s Day. “I needed love,” Talbot wrote on social media. “So I made it. I gave love out to the world and it feels like magic. This is our album of gratitude and power. All love songs. All is love.”
The new single features LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy and Nancy Whang providing choral-like backing vocals, lending themselves to a spooky, urgent tone that complements Talbot’s guttural, grungy voice. The song opens with a descending string run, transitioning into IDLES’ familiar brand of guitar and bass noise.
Lyrically, there’s a note of innuendo in the repeating line “So to speak.” Hold the phone, hip to hip, cheek to cheek / Push me away like I’m Lucifer, so to speak, Talbot sings in the opening lines, and later, Feet touch, brush hands, feather’s ache / We can swing if you prefer / So to speak. There’s also a repeated focus on “the sweat,” implying some sort of strenuous activity between two people. Perhaps dancing. So to speak.
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“Where IDLES were once set on taking the world’s piss, squaring off with strong jaws against the perennially entitled, and exercising personal trauma in real time,” reads a description of the new album via Rough Trade, “they have arrived in this new act to offer the fruits of such perseverance: love, joy, and indeed gratitude for the mere opportunity of existence.”
In addition to new music, the band released dates for their 2024 European tour. They begin on February 29 in Portugal, traveling through Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, and Sweden—to name just a few stops—before concluding the tour in Frankfurt, Germany, on March 23. The band is visiting a total of 17 cities across Europe; a lot to fit into the month of March. Next year’s tour comes on the back of their summer U.S. tour, which led to a few stops in Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan.
The full track list for TANGK includes:
- “The Idea 01”
- “Gift Horse”
- “Pop Pop Pop”
- “Roy”
- “A Gospel”
- “Dancer”
- “Grace”
- “Hall & Oates”
- “Jungle”
- “Gratitude”
- “Monolith”
The new album is available for pre-order on CD and vinyl through Rough Trade. Tickets for the European tour are available through Ticketmaster.
Photo by Tom Ham / Courtesy Grandstand PR
