IDLES, Joy as an Act Of Resistance - album review

The Bristolian five-piece have just dropped their second full-length album and it is full of all the grit, bile and fury you could hope for.

Lyrically clever, musically ferocious, it's like Joy Division got into a scrap with Sleaford Mods while The Libertines played an off-kilter musical accompaniment to entertain onlookers.

Bass-heavy and full of delicious little guitar hooks, the vocals of Joe Talbot power the rhythms along with his half-screeched, half-sung style designed to stick it up those who swear solely by auto-tuned pop stars.

It's a compendium of all those little kinks of alternative music we love to love, moulded into one aggressively rich vein of popular culture references and catchy riffs.

Talbot has described it as a 'parade': "A parade of laughing at the funeral, of listening to the b******s, of phlegm on the mirror."

And his lyrical wit has to be honoured. 'You are a Topshop tyrant. Even your haircut's violent. You look like you're from Love Island' he barks on Never Fight A Man With A Perm. This feels very much like a hit from The Vines. The alarm-like guitars sound their warning over Adam Devonshire's snarling bass while mesmeric thumping from Jon Beavis turns it into something of a dancehall anthem.

Beavis' stick-work again shines on Samaritans. A rather hopeful-sounding number it carries a magnificent swanky rhythm Half Man Half Biscuit would be proud of. Here, Talbot's lyrics have a short, sharp shrift throwing the message out. 'Man up, sit down, chin up, pipe down. Socks up, don't cry, drink up, don't whine. Grow some balls, he said' is the rhetoric as a Katy Perry reference even sneaks into the high-power interlude building to a magnificent, outpouring crescendo.

We do have time for a heartbreaking moment though on June, which sees Talbot singing about his daughter Agatha, who was born stillborn last year. 'A stillborn was still born. I am a father' he laments as he lays his feelings bare on one of the slower moments on the record.

These high feelings run throughout whether furious or futile. Lyrically, this is one of the cleverest releases we've had for a long time.

Rating: 8/10

IDLES will headline at Birmingham's O2 Institute on October 26