Idles at Glastonbury 2024: It all makes sense at Worthy Farm
At A Glance: With their rough as sandpaper punk, Idles delivered the perfect antidote to the polished pop from Dua Lipa a short walk away on the Pyramid Stage. Evidently enthused to have been given such a prominent slot, the socially conscious screamers captured the energy of a firecracker let off in an elevator. Easily one of the most full-throttle and affecting sets of Glastonbury Festival so far.
The Crowd: A swell of 6Music dads cut loose in the most eager way they could without spilling a drop of their £8 IPAs (but what’s that sort of money among 50,000 secretly centrist tech developers putting the world to rights). Although a huge mass was attracted, there was plenty of toing and froing as floating voters made their way between the stages, with Fontaines D.C. and Fatboy Slim serving up stiff competition.
The Craic: Between tracks, there was a hint of bewilderment as many wondered how frontman Joe Talbot hadn’t passed out as he shunned the chance for respite between songs to offer up impassioned rants about the rotten status quo. Then it was straight on to the next manic track as the frontman exhibited the energy of a man who could quite easily open a kitten sanctuary on Tuesday and stab a man in the eye with a fork in a Wetherspoons on Wednesday.
The Classics: The band opened with the brooding and somewhat surprisingly slow ‘Idea 01’ before pulverising the crowd with tracks from all five records to date. The biggest cheers arose when they either brought out Danny Brown for ‘Pop Pop Pop’ or led the crowd in a chant of “fuck the king” (Charles, not Elvis). It was a chant so purposeful in its drunken certitude that many revellers would be waking up shocked to see that the big-eared goon hadn’t already disposed from his lofty position as a result.
The Breakdown: A little while ago, I was chatting to a huge Idles fan about where the band find themselves around eight years into their public tenure. Their latest albums had proved divisive, and many were picking holes in their once proudly lauded political schtick. “Yeah, they disappeared up themselves for a bit, but I think they’re back on the straight and mental,” the Idles enthusiast informed me, apropos of nothing more than an inkling.
The band themselves almost acknowledged this to some degree when they admitted some of their output was “really lost”. Alas, they seemed to find themselves in their biggest show to date at Worthy Farm, a spot where they have made themselves at home over the years. Their caustic blitzkrieg of pointed punk left the audience feeling like they’d been jogging behind a gritter van—more aged and weather for the frenzied fusillade they’d just felt the full force of, but exhilarated and grounded by it.
The bad bastard Farage was slammed, an immigrant boat sailed over the crowd by none other than bloody Banksy, the monarchy were backhanded, the tories were obligatorily torn apart, Palestine was proudly supported, but above all, there was punk. At the heart of all this activism was fierce atavism—a bludgeoning sense that this is a vital virtue that needs to be exercised; the 6Music haka, so to speak.
With Idles, there is always a touch of duplicity as the crowd are asked to overthrow the monarchy one minute and then organising themselves into a swirling mass the next. They’re asked to look around at their fellow revellers and try to assist anyone who might be struggling with a tricky narcotics situation, and then pulverise thy neighbour in a mosh pit the next, but that simply meant that more was more as no stone was left unturned by a bunch of lunatics blissfully cutting loose in a manner that was anything but ignorant.
Besides, you wouldn’t want to bump into Talbot in the Glastonbury press tent, having dished out a bad review after that display. He may well pounce on you like a dog shagging a football before lovingly accompanying you on the ambulance ride to the hospital as he tells you about the crumbling NHS.
