“WE’RE REAL MUSICIANS NOW!”
Most of us would be happy never to hear the word ‘lockdown’ again, but the UK’s most exciting guitar band have made the best out of a bad situation. Forced to abandon their usual approach to writing, Idles found a new way of working - and discovered entirely new sounds in the process. The result is a brilliant new album, Crawler.
Less than a year since TG spoke to them about the hit album Ultra Mono, guitarists Lee Kiernan and Mark Bowen are back with even bigger pedalboards and an even more ambitious sound. But this story starts with the band’s members scattered across the globe, separated by Covid-19.
“We had to write it with everyone off in different places,” says Mark, simply. “Normally we write in a room together, and you have to impress four other people with something loud and brash. This time, you were able to sit and work on something until you got better at it. You didn’t have to be good at it right away. There are arpeggios and things like that that I’ve never done before. And
