Off the back of a mammoth Summer, kickstarted by their iconic headline set at Glastonbury’s Other Stage and capped off with a sold-out North America tour, British rock outfit IDLES will make their highly-anticipated return to Australia and New Zealand in January 2025 in support of their latest album, TANGK.
Joining IDLES on all Australian dates will be American outfit NATION OF LANGUAGE. Four years on from the release of their unexpectedly self-assured debut album, the band have attracted a rapidly growing international audience via their danceable and impassioned take on new wave, post-punk & shoegaze genres.
Opening proceedings in Brisbane will be Meanjin-based punk band VOIID, while Sydney will see the genre-bending ECCA VANDAL debuting unreleased tracks as part of her highly anticipated return to the stage and Melbourne will be treated to the debut of local punks L☆UR☆ & THE HELL CUTZ. Supporting IDLES in Auckland will be the five-piece Polynesian Metal band SHEPHERD’S REIGN.
TICKETS ON SALE NOW
For complete tour and ticket information, visit: livenation.com.au & livenation.co.nz.
About IDLES:
TANGK is the righteous and vibrant fifth album from madcap truth-seekers, IDLES. Pronounced “tank” with a whiff of the “g” – an onomatopoeic reference to the lashing way the band imagined their guitars sounding that has since grown into a sigil for living in love – the record is the band’s most ambitious and striking work yet. Where IDLES were once set on taking the world’s piss, squaring off with strong jaws against the perennially entitled, and exercising personal trauma in real time, they have arrived in this new act to offer the fruits of such perseverance: love, joy, and indeed gratitude for the mere opportunity of existence.
A radical sense of defiant empowerment radiates from TANGK, co-produced by Nigel Godrich, IDLES guitarist Mark Bowen, and Kenny Beats. Despite his reputation as an incendiary post-punk sparkplug, frontman Joe Talbot sings almost all the feelings inside these 10 songs with hard-earned soul, offering each lusty vow or solidarity plea as a bona fide pop song—that is, a thing for everyone to pass around and share, communal anthems intended for overcoming our grievance. Lead single “Dancer” stands as the throbbing and scuzzy highlight at the album’s center – rattling bass and ricocheting guitar giving Talbot space to talk about sweat and sex on the dancefloor. (You will spy LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy and Nancy Whang here, too, singing.) It is lascivious and playful and positive, the ecstatic sound of at least a temporary fix. In the improvised hook, Talbot offers IDLES’ essential new mantra: “I give myself to you/As long as you move on the floor.”
He is singing about the rapture of a new relationship, but he is also singing about the special dynamic between IDLES and their fans, or IDLES and the world at large. This is a band’s vow to keep lifting and fighting for themselves and their listeners, to keep offering the grim persistence of joy and hope and love and wonder as long as that’s what anyone needs to survive. It is a love song the same way that TANGK is a love album—open to anyone who requires something to shout out loud in order to fend off any encroaching sense of the void, now or forever.
ABOUT NATION OF LANGUAGE:
Four years on from the release of their unexpectedly self-assured debut album, NYC based Nation of Language have attracted a rapidly growing international audience via their danceable and impassioned take on new wave, post-punk & shoegaze genres. Following the critical acclaim of their their first LP Introduction, Presence, its 2021 follow-up A Way Forward pushed them to a wider audience—landing them their late-night TV debut on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and a string of sold out tours—and their 2023 record Strange Disciple has continued this momentum, landing Rough Trade’s coveted #1 album of the year spot. Now a mainstay atop lists of the best live acts of recent years, the band continue to charge synth-first into their latest chapter as a major festival draw at recent iterations of Austin City Limits Festival, Desert Daze, Pitchfork Festival, Primavera Sound, Corona Capital, Outside Lands, Bonnaroo and many others.
ABOUT SHEPHARDS REIGN:
Tribal. Supremely talented. Fiercely noble. Richly proud. Shepherds Reign are bringing their house to your ears, mind and heart, their power and passion unequivocal, their musical voices luminescent and majestic. Hailing from South Auckland New Zealand, and thus Polynesian by birth and blood, Shepherds Reign is life, Shepherds Reign is survival, Shepherds Reign is mental and physical health and Shepherds Reign is what they are on this planet to do. Their voice is their mighty, fearsome music and their vocation is to share with the world every aspect of lives and cultures deserve the international ear.
ABOUT VOIID:
In a world full of injustice, inequality and ignorance, VOIID endeavour to lend a voice to those in need of it and as a band strive to their larger ambition of reinventing the role of female. After sharing stages with the likes of Grinspoon, Amyl & The Sniffers, Clowns and Cosmic Psychos, VOIID’s magnetism has seen the band grow a loyal community of followers who share their belief in an equal future, as well as smashing a few guitars along the way to claiming it.
ABOUT ECCA VANDAL:
Loud, genre-defying and unafraid to be different, Ecca Vandal is a true original. Spending her formative years as a jazz musician, Ecca’s passion for the improvisation of jazz led her to fall in love with the DIY abandon of punk and foster an ability to effortlessly balance soulful melodics with raw, unapologetic power. Ecca brings unrelenting energy to the stage with a history of touring alongside global heavyweights such as Queens of the Stone Age, Incubus and The Prodigy. Ecca Vandal epitomises creative multiplicity — a rebellious and tenacious voice, and the explosive shot of adrenaline that’s needed right now.
ABOUT L☆UR☆ & THE HELL CUTZ:
L☆UR☆ and the HELL CUTZ is a four-piece Australian punk/grunge band formed on the sticky carpets of the Naarm music scene. Frontwoman L☆UR☆ is a singer-songwriter who channels feminine rage and irreverence into melody, and is renowned for her explosive energy and thrashing stage presence. Together with the HELL CUTZ, they invite audiences into the haunting realm of her mind, delivering a performance where chaos unleashes beauty.
