Diehard Radiohead fans out there may have noticed that Wall Of Eyes, the latest album by Radiohead offshoot The Smile, wasn’t produced by the band’s long-running collaborator Nigel Godrich, whose relationship with the band stretches all the way back to the 1995 B-side Talk Show. Godrich’s absence is presumably because he was busy working on Tangk, the forthcoming new album by punk quintet IDLES. The record sees the Bristol-formed five-piece rework their sound, moving away from the snarling ultra-aggression of their early work and into more groove-based, experimental rock. In a recent interview with The New Cue, frontman Joe Talbot said that going into the studio Godrich, who co-produced Tangk with Kenny Beats and Idles’ guitarist Mark Bowen, was akin to working with your icons.
“I think working with your heroes, as in Nigel Godrich, you come at the situation with self-doubt,” Talbot said. “Not because of his behaviour, but I had self-doubt going into it. Bowen’s a lot more dynamic than I am and he feels a lot more comfortable in a situation where he’s writing in a new environment with lots of new toys and lots of new instruments. I just need a kick and a snare and everyone else to shut the fuck up. But it was great and very fruitful. We learned way more than we’ve ever learned before. Because with [2021 album] Crawler we realised our potential. Potential means a capacity to learn and work hard. If you have the capacity to learn and work hard and you do it something beautiful will come. Even if it’s acceptance that you can’t fucking do it. You might think you can fight Mike Tyson and then you get in the ring and you realise you can’t.”
Tangk, which also features contributions from LCD Soundsystem leader James Murphy, is released later this month.
