Mid-Week Music: Album of the Year - IDLES - Crawler
There’s little I detest more than an album review that begins with a long autobiographical story. But this is my personal sobriety newsletter, so suck it up.
The latest album by IDLES was released on a Friday, the day that I drove myself and my 13-year-old son to Pennsylvania to attend my father-in-law’s funeral. We listened to it in the car and enjoyed it (we are both fans). I couldn’t engage with the lyrics as much as I would like, and my car’s stereo system isn’t ideal for capturing the nuances of a musical performance.
That night, while I was with my wife’s family preparing for the next day’s funeral, my mom called and told me to sit down: my father had collapsed of a probable heart attack and had to be resuscitated with CPR and defibrillation. He had been kept alive by the man who saved him, then the paramedics and brought from an unknown location to a hospital. We didn’t know much. I left early the next morning for my hometown, Grand Rapids, Michigan, to be with my mom and sister. Due to covid restrictions I wouldn’t be able to see my dad (only two are allowed and my mom and sister were the two those first days). But I could do my best to be present for my family. I listened to Crawler, and the rest of the IDLES discography, a couple of times on the drive there. As soon as I arrived downtown, I met my mom on the skybridge connecting the parking ramp with the hospital, the closest place to my dad that we could meet. We held hands and cried together. My dad was pretty messed up. His entire tally included broken and fractured vertebrae, sternum, and ribs, drastic heart function loss, some internal bleeding that was feared to be in the lungs (but ultimately was just in the tissue around the lungs), and various other things associated with these injuries. His brain function looked, according to the vitals, to be good. But he was in an induced paralysis and sedation to keep him still so he could heal, so that he could get an eventual heart catheterization to determine the actual injury to his heart and ultimate course of treatment.
While I couldn’t see my dad in person, I was able to spend good time with my mom and sister, just holding them, crying, feeling. We made plans for me to come back to see him once he was awake and recovering. The unspoken qualifier was “if.”
On the drive back to Pennsylvania, I returned to my all-IDLES playlist.
IDLES formed in 2009 in Bristol, England. They struggled to get a foothold in the music scene with their first releases, two EPs, despite their quirky live energy. They were good, not great, heavily influenced by TV on the Radio with a little early U2 thrown in on the guitar side. Nothing that I noticed or probably would have given a second listen to at the time. Their breakthrough was their debut album Brutalism (which I didn’t hear until after their second album), a fucking stormer of raw punk energy and blistering explosions of commentary on sexism, classism, depression, messy relationships, and more. So much more.
During the making of the album, the singer and lyricist, Joe Talbot, and the bassist, Adam Devonshire, both lost their mothers. They both took refuge in drugs and alcohol. For that album, guitarist Lee Kiernan, just two years sober, joined the band. His presence seemed to create a pivot point for the band, and their subsequent music maintained that energy while channeling messages of love and community, still eviscerating constructs of masculinity, racism, sexism, and various other ills of society. There’s a great documentary about the band called “Don’t Go Gentle” that goes into all of this.
Their next album, Joy as an Act of Resistance, was a monster, almost a masterpiece (I say almost because I suspect their best is yet to come), and that’s where I come in. During lockdown we binge-watched NPR TIny Desk Concerts on YouTube and heard IDLES for the first time. Holy Fucking Shit. We (me, my wife, my son) were hooked and immediately started listening to it non-stop. I’m not going to go into that album here, or their next one, because that’s too much for this post and I want to get to Crawler.
Crawler. By this time, Talbot is sober and full-on ready to reflect on his drinking, his mother’s drinking, the familial cycle of addiction, basically the whole whole thing. The music has changed, too. The charging punk bangers are still in there but there’s a depth of texture that’s being explored, sounds that are alien and sometimes disturbing, sometimes enveloping and comforting. They’re not experimenting as much as implementing: their music and lyrics have always supported each other but somehow it’s even more intertwined here, with Talbot more willing to use his voice as an instrument more than a megaphone.
The opener “MTT 420 RR” recalls the terror of a crash between Talbot and the rider of a motorcycle (the model name of the motorcycle is the title of the song). He sets the scene:
It was February
I was cold and I was high
and describes the terror of impact with a gravelly detachment
He looked up
He lost control
He was degloved
He was jellyrolled
Reflecting on his own mortality and that of the motorcyclist
He wanted love
He wanted soul
And
It’s raining glass like a fever storm
Every promise I have sworn tonight
His voice elevates and increases in intensity as the noise bed of the song builds
Are you ready for the storm?
It’s a reflection on being so close to your own death and the death of another, and your own complicity in it (“I was high”). How many chances did I take with myself and others when I was reckless with my own addiction?
No rest, no pause. We’re in “The Wheel,” a relentless, pounding slab of rock about the cycle/wheel of addiction passed from one generation to the next. That it is so specifically autobiographical makes it essential. You can’t turn away. Nothing is abstract.
I got on my knees
And I begged my mother
With a bottle in one hand
It’s one or the other
And so it turns
Again and again
Throughout the lyrics he stumbles through loss and the realization of his own place on the wheel, and then
Can I get a hallelujah?
Hear it from the back now?
A call with no response. Utterly alone.
For me, the song “Crawl!” is the centerpiece. It is the closest connection I have felt to my own addiction laid out in song.
“God Damn, I’m feeling good!”
Said the liar to the congregation
And I know I’m not what I should
That’s why I’m smashing my pretty face in
It’s difficult for me to type those lyrics without starting to cry. The decades of abusing myself with alcohol, and the concurrent facade of being A-OK to my family and the rest of the world, all written out. I knew I was hurting myself. I knew I was in deep. I didn’t know if there was a way back and I didn’t think I would ever care.
And yeah I’m on my knees for porcelain
‘Cause it felt like god to me
And yeah, I’m a fucking crawler
Crawling hurts, but it works for me
I’m alright! I’m alright! I’m alright! I’m alright!
I’m feeling magni-fucking-fique
I’m feeling magni-fucking-fique
I had the tools to soothe my anxiety, my stress, my fears, all my feelings. They were in the countless bottles that I consumed, the nights of drinking myself to sleep. I crawled through life and it worked for me. This is essential: alcohol was a tool that served me. It was a poorly-chosen tool, and ultimately it is never, ever the right tool for the job. But it worked. I was crawling instead of walking or running, but I was still moving through life, checking the boxes.
The album has so much more, but I want to close my commentary with that last song because it’s the one I return to the most.
Overall, the album is completely intertwined with this period of my life.
I returned to Grand Rapids and that same hospital only days later, having been told that I might be saying goodbye to my dad. I spent the better part of a week with him, sitting with him, holding his hand, reading to him, helping him make sense of his surroundings when he was awake. I was present with him, without hope, without fear. Remarkably, he recovered. A lot of very specific things had to happen in order for him to survive, and they all happened. I just spent Christmas with my family: my dad had only returned from rehabilitation a few days before. His doctors say he’ll be back to 100% capability in only a couple more months.
I don’t know how I would feel about this album if I were still drinking. Would it have made me think about sobriety? Would I have skimmed through it, not feeling what it had to offer? Or would I have bobbed my head, appreciating the music without feeling it in my bones? It doesn’t really matter, because I’m grateful for it right now, where I am. I’m also grateful to hear these people making music about their own struggle, being vulnerable to the world, talking about things we usually only talk about in meetings or one-on-one with the people who understand us the most. I imagine that it’s really difficult to do well, and IDLES does it really well.
I hope you give the whole album a listen. It’s not for everyone, but it’s for a lot of us. Don’t go gentle.
I love you,
David
