Bristol, U.K.’s angriest post-punk band turned reformed international spreaders of love IDLES appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on Wednesday to perform their latest single, “Gift Horse”. The gut-punch of a performance happened to fall on the late J Dilla‘s birthday, and in an interesting crossover moment, IDLES singer Joe Talbot gave a shoutout to the legendary producer.
The latest single off the band’s forthcoming fifth studio album TANGK begins with a solitary bass line, in stark contrast to the band’s usual pummeling instrumentation. The first few measures are emblematic of the band’s stylistic shift on the new album, which they described as a dance record, bolstering their claim by collaborating with LCD Soundsystem on the lead single “Dancer”. But the pummel does come eventually, with the brute force of the five-piece raining blows down upon the Tonight Show studio audience.
Frontman Joe Talbot wielded his microphone like a deadly weapon as he spit out praise for his “Gift Horse” like it was venom trying to poison him from the inside. During the breakdown where Talbot says, “F–k the king / He ain’t the king,” on the record, on TV he instead dropped the obscenity and ad-libbed, “The king / J Dilla’s the king!” ahead of the climax of the song which put guitarist Lee Kiernan on the ground.
IDLES – “Gift Horse” – The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon
Questlove, drummer for The Tonight Show house band The Roots, offered some praise for the band’s boisterous performance and the Dilla shoutout on Instagram.
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The Dilla dedication was perhaps no coincidence, as IDLES embrace their newfound interest in moving people to dance. The band has garnered international acclaim and two Grammy nominations for their brutal instrumentation and confrontation of themes like class warfare and toxic masculinity. With TANGK, however, they’re just trying to spread the love.
“When I started this album,” Talbot told NME last year, “I said to [IDLES guitarist/producer Mark] Bowen: ‘I want to make people dance, I want people to feel the love that I need in my life, I want to make people move, I want our music to be infectious again—and I want it to be infectious in a way that makes people feel, not think. I want to feel part of something electric again.’ I wanted to elaborate and transgress from 2021’s CRAWLER, which was the start of something new for us. When something feels as electric as CRAWLER did, I just wanted to continue it and to evoke a sense of purpose with what we are as musicians.”
TANGK is available here for pre-order. The band will support the album on a North American tour set to kick off in May and run through October. For tickets and a full list of tour dates visit IDLES’ website.
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