UK punks IDLES recently popped by the legendary Abbey Road studio to record a treasure trove of performances.
In celebration of their forthcoming record, Ultra Mono, set to arrive in a little under a month. The band hosted a live stream event that saw them make their way through cuts from the album and a handful covers.
IDLES performed Ultra Mono tracks ‘Mr. Motivator,’ ‘Grounds,’ and ‘A Hymn,’ alongside several album cuts from previous releases.
They also delivered two earth-shattering covers. It would quite frankly be a cardinal sin to hit Abbey Road and not cover The Beatles. The band offered their frenetic take on White Album, track ‘Helter Skelter.’
Check out IDLES covering The Beatles’ ‘Helter Skelter’ and The Strokes’ ‘Reptilia’:
They also covered The Strokes, Room on Fire single ‘Reptilia. You can find all the performances here.
Ultra Mono, the third record from IDLES, will arrive on Friday, September 25th.
In an interview with Apple Music, back in July, IDLES frontman Joe Talbot delved into the creative process of the band’s third record, and how their failure to find “success” in their first decade of the band served to be a profound influence in the way they approached making the record.
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“The beautiful thing about us being ignored for 10 years is that there was no one telling us what we couldn’t do, we just had to learn it ourselves,” Talbot shared. “And that meant that now I think ‘Ultra Mono’ is vigorously Idles. It’s fluent in IDLES language because we’ve just been able to take baby steps every moment, make mistakes, and no one’s fucking at our gigs so we can make mistakes and come back stronger.”
“We just built it slowly over time,” he continued. “It made us really appreciate selling 40 tickets. It made us really appreciate being able to write five decent songs in a row, because we took that time and we were given the breadth to make mistakes, and now we’re here.
“I think experience is fucking amazing but you also have to hold yourself accountable and work your ass off. It’s not an industry that carries people. They chew you up and they spit you out.”
Talbot has had his fingers in many proverbial pies over quarantine. The rocker launched his own quarantine talk show Balley TV. Featuring interviews with music contemporaries like Sharon Van Etten, Kate Tempest, Kenny Beats, Pearl Jam‘s Jeff Ament, Savages vocalist Jehnny Beth and Chvrches‘ Lauren Mayberry.
