Contemporary rock’s angriest band IDLES stopped by The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on Wednesday to shake the walls with a performance of “The Wheel”. The track comes from the British post-punk outfit’s Grammy-nominated 2021 album, CRAWLER.
As anyone who caught any of the band’s high-profile 2022 festival appearances at Coachella, Sea.Hear.Now, This Ain’t No Picnic, or Glastonbury will tell you, an IDLES performance is unrelenting. A thumping bass line provides fitting walk-up music for singer Joseph Talbot to stalk the stage like a pro wrestling heel (Stereogum even compared his appearance to Dax Harwood). He delivers the song’s hopeless lyrics like he’s exercising a demon, making spastic, gyrating movements. He even employs a Roger Daltrey mic swing at one point, and ultimately works himself into a frenzy during the song’s climax when he begins bashing a cymbal with his bare hand.
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IDLES fetched a pair of 2023 Grammy nominations for their fourth album, released back in November 2021. In addition to nabbing Best Rock Album, the group got a nod for Best Rock Performance for the single “Crawl!“. In the album category, IDLES are up against The Black Keys, Elvis Costello & The Imposters, Machine Gun Kelly, Ozzy Osbourne, and Spoon. For a full list of Grammy nominees head here.
“We want people who’ve gone through trauma, heartbreak, and loss to feel like they’re not alone,” Talbot said of CRAWLER. This album shows the ugly side of where those things come from, but also how it is possible to reclaim joy from those experiences.”
Watch IDLES perform “The Wheel” from Fallon.
IDLES – “The Wheel”