Idles – Welcome Review

Digging into the honest groundwork of a band which has since boomed from its original initiative is always a fascinating stop-off. Where Idles find themselves with love and danceability in their hearts following Tangk, they were once filled with bitterness, rage and founded themselves on a love for grassroots and a desire to protect it. They have discarded their earlier cries against the system they hoped to rattle as the words of unhealthy men, but would healthy men fronting an alleged punk outfit publicly put their trust in Gordon Brown? Probably not, and a trip down memory lane and into the embrace of Welcome, an extended play from Idles when it was just Joe Talbot and Adam Devonshire on bass, paints a different picture.  

But is that not the beauty of time? We age and wither. Our old ideas of youthful rebellion are soon churned up and spat out by a machine-like look at the world as self-preservation takes hold and the desire to not die in filth evolves from looking out for one another and into being able to foot the bill for your ever-rising rent. Welcome is now hated by the band and a bulk of the fans because hindsight is a beauty. Opener 26/27 is worth salvaging from this four-piece EP and what follows is certainly solid enough to have garnered interest in a band who would find themselves, a decade later, working with LCD Soundsystem. 26/27 tells a wildly different story, of fading away and amounting to little in the public sphere. How their fortunes change. With Welcome comes the acceptance of stilted and early, brutish work from a band who would hone their sound better in the years to come – yet it is poor form to write off songs which instil the same message of their Joy as an Act of Resistance sound.  

Meydei feels a little primitive but nothing beyond the usual run of spirited Idles sound. Welcome is a melting pot of ideas which are better developed elsewhere. To reduce it to a spittle-covered disaster is a fascinating turn from Talbot and company who cut their teeth as all indie bands do. There is nothing within Welcome to be embarrassed by yet it is now met with disdain from those who listen to these same sounds just in better lyrical contexts. Snappy instrumental work features throughout these four tracks and brings about the core of Idles’ better hits. No major punk or sweating, volatile charm can be heard but the likes of Meydei do have the percussion necessary to conjure up those spirited jumps into a crowd of likeminded listeners.  

A bit beige in places? Perhaps. But that is what happens when a drone-like context is given to Germany. The song, not the country. Flutters of a gothic and menacing sound are trialled and tucked away quietly in the following years. That is the only real change from Welcome to the breakout Idles received just a few years later. Closer Two Tone has just one, rage. Idles are at a primitive break in this EP and this is not a bad feeling to exert. Punchy numbers and a darker slice of their qualities come through with a surge of punk-like tones which still exist in expanded, artistically rewarding forms in the hands of other bands. Idles reject this and their earlier tones of anger towards the powers that be because they are slowly slipping out of conditions which give them the firepower to rally against the systems they are now figuring out. A shame to see it go, but Welcome remains as a firecracker of a start.  

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