Idles guitarist Mark Bowen on the album that “exemplifies 21st-century rock music”
Post-punk has had not one, but two, revivals in the 21st century alone. The dawn of the new century spawned a new crop of guitar-driven bands combining garage influences with a more minimal form of post-punk, leading to the commercial success of artists like The Strokes and Arctic Monkeys. Less than a decade later, a more experimental form of the genre was born out of the Brixton Windmill and Dan Carey’s Speedy Wunderground.
At the forefront of that second revival were Idles. Combining Joe Talbot’s enraged, spoken rants about the state of the world with synthesised guitar tones and pounding drums, they forged a new kind of rock music for a contemporary audience. Accompanied by the likes of Viagra Boys and Fontaines D.C., alongside more jazz-inspired bands like Black Country, New Road and Black Midi, Idles spearheaded the UK modern post-Brexit post-punk craze.
Speaking with Consequence, guitarist Mark Bowen named ten records he believes every music fan should own, starting out with Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ debut. Existing alongside the likes of The Strokes, Karen O and Yeah Yeah Yeahs were an instrumental part of that initial revival. According to Bowen, the album “should be included in everyone’s record collection because it really exemplifies 21st-century rock music.”
Not only does the record encapsulate the new wave, punk, and post-punk of the previous century, according to Bowen, it also includes “touchstones of the bands that were contemporaries at the time, like The Strokes and things like that. And it’s all like mashed together in this singular thing.”
Bowen commends Fever To Tell for being “21st-century rock music that is no longer caught up in genre or even movements or scenes. It’s a woman who sounds like she was playing in CBGBs back in the day, but the drums on that album will sound absolutely nothing like they sound now, like something that was maybe made in the UK in the ‘90s. That’s where we’re at with 21st-century music, and I think Fever To Tell exemplifies that and kind of kick-started it.”
Spawning timeless hits like ‘Maps’ and combining the sounds of post-punk past and present, Fever To Tell certainly was a vital record in the development of 21st-century rock. It kick-started the experimentation and freedom in modern rock scenes, including post-punk.
Listen back to Fever To Tell by Yeah Yeah Yeahs below.
