Considering its brash, bizarrely brilliant predecessor, it’s right in line.
“Car Crash” is a disjointed, cold-war-siren-sounding, brooding banger. Some continued to be unusual to the masses and others were atypical for IDLES.
Using hip-hop beats as a North Star and often performing on their instruments as drummers, the duo unlocked a combination of heartless sounds for Ultra Mono that elevated Talbot’s heartfelt (and challenging) lyrics.įor the just-released Crawler, they continued exploring obtuse sounds. Every now and then, a pedal that does something really weird will kick you into gear.” “It may sound useless, but it still might touch you somehow. “When we were writing this album, we’d go to random guitar shops and ask them for the weirdest pedals they had,” adds Kiernan. “We basically created a sound palette first, and once we created a sound, that sound informed the riffs.”Īnd the most obnoxious sounds on Ultra Mono were intentional. “The noise-making had to be thought of from the start,” Bowen told PG in 2020. When writing Ultra Mono, Bowen and Kiernan looked for sounds rather than riffs. The popularity in those releases opened doors to new tools and the time to explore fresh tones and approaches. That volatile energy, sensible setups, and Sten-gun attack anchored both 2017’s Brutalism and 2018’s Joy as an Act of Resistance. So the need and access for big, potent, top-shelf gear was unnecessary. Doing so meant playing small rooms as much as possible. sharpening their sneering tongue, quickening their sting, and focusing their vision. Low-budget imports and solid-state combos were what they had and they made that work. For much of the 2010s, the bashers from Bristol played on anything and plugged into everything.