THE TOP 100ALBUMS OF 2018
An overwhelming choice with our panel as Album Of he Year, Joy As An Act Of Resistance has been the record that took Idles to ‘the next level’, barging its way to the upper echelons of the UK album chart and helping the band sell out a series of riotous live dates, with a vast globe-straddling 2019 tour announced as we went to press. We managed to ind a small slot in the band’s increasingly hectic diary to speak to frontman Joe Talbot and guitarist Mark Bowen as they prepared to go on stage at a seething SWX in their home city of Bristol. It was to prove a celebratory homecoming for a band who succeeded in cathartically, joyously articulating the disillusion, fear and anger of a nation in 2018.
Idles have been on the road since September for a 60-plus date world tour and, save for a brief pause over Christmas, will have had very few days of by the end of 2018. With momentum gathering behind Joy As An Act Of Resistance since its release at the end of August, there’s been little in the way of a break for the ive-piece – what with winning a Q Award and playing a triumphant set on Later… With Jools Holland, yet still inding time to procreate.