@Corner Hotel, 24th Jan 2019
How do you even begin to describe the utter chaos that IDLES brought to the Corner Hotel without doing it a disservice?
The show had been sold out for months and Joe Talbot and the boys did not disappoint, and you’d be hard pressed to think of ways that they could top such a performance throughout the rest of their tour.
It’s impossible to keep your eye on the band as a whole on stage, how can you when Talbot is pulling your attention one way before guitarist Mark Bowen snaps it back to him. When there is so much going on, how do you even begin to tell the story of the night a Bristol band played their first Australian show and blew everyone away?
IDLES carry with them an inner anger, but it’s an anger that manifests itself as joy on stage. Still, that doesn’t stop Talbot giving the crowd his two-pence worth, including telling everyone he hated tennis and those who played it in the middle of the Australian Open – a tournament that grips the whole city.
But the frontman wears his heart on his sleeve and that’s part of the reason why they’ve been so successful. They’ve also mastered the art of the live show, from the slow-drawn out Colossus to Well Done to Never Fight A Man With A Perm.
Although this was never just a show about the songs. IDLES are about connecting with people, and the way they connected with the crowd should be used as a case study in how to put on a successful performance.
Whether it was stopping the show to help a punter find his phone, then inviting him upstairs and performing a duet of All I Want For Christmas to getting half a dozen people up on stage and handing them the instruments during Exeter, the night had it all.