Music
Emma Wilkes
/ 4 August 2025
Review
Joined by the likes of The Voidz & Lambrini Girls, the post-punks played their biggest ever headline shows for a special hometown weekender
“Everything around this square is the geography of my growing up as a musician,” says Joe Talbot, casting his eye over the 14,000 people here for the first night of IDLES’ big homecoming. He frequented beloved Bristol venue, The Louisiana, which lies less than half a mile away on the other side of the river. Not far from here, he suffered the psychotic episode that inspired the writing of ‘The Wheel’. Somewhere in the vicinity, he was “allegedly arrested”. It’s plain to see – looking at such a large hometown crowd, in a setting bordered by trees and Georgian buildings that feels more intimate than it is, he is humbled. “I am eternally grateful, and baffled.”
These are their only UK shows this year, a final blowout for the era of their last album TANGK and a noisy celebration of their story so far. As they crest the 10th anniversary of their 2016 debut Brutalism, they’ve scrambled up the ranks far faster than many bands of their ilk, neatly straddling the line between the mainstream and the alternative sphere. They’ve attracted everyone from tattooed indie kids to elder punks to black-clad, edgier types. They’ve curated two contrasting line-ups for these shows, opposing poles which together embody the full spectrum of what it is they do.
Friday caters to the punk crowd, the more straightforward of the two bills but with a finger firmly on the pulse of British guitar music. Lambrini Girls’ squalling riffs and life-affirming appetite for chaos – “Are you ready to FUCK?”, is vocalist and guitarist Phoebe Lunny’s opening line – makes them feel like headliners in their own right, while Soft Play stomp and swagger through uproarious songs about everything from bin juice accidents, girls fighting, the lack of a hi-hat on Isaac Holman’s drum kit and grief.
Saturday’s more eclectic line-up is primed to smash minds open, beginning with Grove’s intelligent yet party-starting coalescence of gritty hip-hop and performance poetry, and Scaler’s dystopian fusion of electronica and metal. Leftfield as they may be, the crowd are appreciative, before Hinds’ sun-bleached riffs mark a return to terra firma. The Voidz plunge the crowd into their weird world with their angular, choppy wall of sound which oddly matches Julian Casablancas’ rambling stage banter and spaced-out mannerisms, cradling the mic as he sings like he’s having a love affair with it.
Then it’s time for the men of the hour. Both setlists are studded with their biggest live staples: the slow-burning crawl of ‘Colossus’; the skippy ‘I’m Scum’; the sobering ‘Mother’ and the joyful ‘Dancer’, to name a few, all opening pits and propelling beers flying left, right and centre. From there, they’re picking from a grab bag of deep cuts. The Friday crowd gets ‘Television’, ‘When The Lights Come On’, ‘The Beachland Ballroom’ and a rogue yet fun airing of ‘Date Night’. Saturday’s lot get ‘Samaritans’, ‘1049 Gotho’, beloved ballad ‘Roy’ and “the oldie but averagey” ‘Well Done’. It’s Saturday’s choices that seem to be the most successful, embracing the rowdiness the crowd crave, while a couple of slower cuts on the Friday sound just a little too thin and slight.
The weekend’s gathering is simultaneously personal and political. Cries of “VIVA PALESTINA” are steady and constant, with QR codes to donate to Medical Aid For Palestinians appearing on the screens. The overarching tone, however, is not one of anger, but of the unity IDLES have always called for. “We need to get together and show each other and remind each other that what it is that makes us human beings – showing love,” says Joe. He’s hardly short of it himself, his speeches brimming with gratitude. “Thank you so much for making home feel like home,” he says at the end of Saturday’s gig. To reference the album they’re best known for, in their home, and in a place renowned for its leftist politics, they epitomise joy as an act of resistance.
