Theatre Fairmount – The Concordian

English post-punk outfit leave life and lyrics on the line at Théâtre Fairmount

Frontman Joe Talbot gives Fairmount all of his energy. Photo by Simon New.

“It’s not up to me whether you love yourself, it was a period in my life where I had to do it,” said Joe Talbot, lead vocalist of Idles. The five piece band from England is touring North America and Europe with their new album, Joy as an Act of Resistance. They broke out last year with Brutalism, which put the punks on the map for their sardonic polemics on nationalist English politics over unfiltered, blaring guitars and percussion.

For their second album, the pressure was on to feed the flame first fanned with Brutalism.

Ultimately, they tried to make the first record again. The band felt frustrated in attempting to capitalize on hype, and finally scrapped the project. “We were in a downward spiral; we had to learn to enjoy ourselves, for ourselves,” said Talbot. His mother passed away during the creation of Brutalism and, in February, he stopped drinking after struggling with alcoholism. Joy as an Act of Resistance shows joy as resistant to different things, one being turbulence in the band members’s own lives.

At the depths of Talbot’s depression, he found joy through vulnerability in therapy. “I carried so much weight of turmoil and insecurities all my life. As soon as I started becoming vulnerable, exchanging vulnerability with my partner and my friends, a weight was lifted,” he said.

The idea of vulnerability is fuel for the joy expressed throughout the album. Each song is a detonation of ego, masculinity, xenophobia and other topics that Talbot and the gang gun down one by one. When explaining the project to me, Talbot retained that same humility and honesty, making no attempt to oversell his recent indie smash. While technically robust and more polished than ever, Idles’s sound alone was never their defining feature. “I think being derivative is a dirty word in cool bands,” Talbot admitted.

Guitarist Lee Kiernan lets the crowd know what’s on the menu. Photo by Simon New.

The tone is raucous, but the lyrics are dead-simple. After Brutalism, Talbot resisted overcomplicating the next record. “I just wanted to make an album that was as naive as possible,” he said. He explained that on the track “Danny Nedelko,” a pro-immigration anthem about Talbot’s best friend, a Ukrainian immigrant to Bristol, Talbot’s simple thesis is “why would you want to kick someone out who’s a nice person?” Talbot said he wants to make people dance and think at the same time. “Obviously, there’s a huge weight behind what I’m saying. If you sit me down with some other pseudo-intellectual we could sit there and ponder on the importance of immigration,” he laughed.

Kiernan gets some close praise from an exuberant fan. Photo by Simon New.

Talbot writes in simple, childlike syntax on this album as an intentional subversion of hype from Idles’s last album. “What I wanted to do is make an album that joyfully resists the trope of ‘this pseudo-intellectual band that are gonna do something clever with the second album, like they did that rudimentary first album,’” he said. “So I was like alright, I’m going to make something that sounds childlike. I’m going to write lyrics that a 10-year-old could write,” he said.

“It’s also something that I thought would be a vulnerable act, is to be naive, because critics don’t like naivety,” said Talbot. Indeed, Pitchfork’s review panned the latest record for painting with too broad a stroke.

The direct nature of the lyrics and the explosive energy of Idles’s sound makes for a wildfire of a live show. The boys played Théâtre Fairmount on Tuesday, Sept. 18. As they opened with “Colossus,” a booming, slowburn of an album opener on Joy as an Act of Resistance, you could see that the crowd had been waiting for this moment for months. All of the visceral, focused chaos that comes across in Idles’s sound was there in the live show. Explosive, animated performances from all five members left the crowd teaming with energy, boiling over into moshes that made you check your ego at the door. And for a time, there was nothing to resist, just pure, unmitigated joy.

The Radio Dept. to perform at Théâtre Fairmount for their North American tour

Travelling all the way from Stockholm to Montreal are Johan Duncanson and Martin Carlberg, the duo known as The Radio Dept. Théâtre Fairmount will be welcoming the Swedish pop duo on Monday, March 6. They will bring the party to their audience while performing their latest album, Running Out of Love. It’s a politically-charged album that is perfect for grooving to, with its fusion of pop and European electronic dance ballads.

The band has been around for 16 years—Duncanson and Carlberg began making music together back in 2001. “Martin and I, we like pop music and we want it to have a light, experimental touch,” Duncanson said. “We have the same taste when it comes to chords in melodies and arrangements.”The Radio Dept.’s sound has evolved throughout the years. “At first, it was always acoustic guitar, bass and vocals. Now, for the past 10 years, we’ve added drop beats and bass line,” Duncanson said. The band name, The Radio Dept., was originally the name of Duncanson’s previous band. He ended up re-using the name for his current band. “When Martin and I started our band, we did not have any imagination so we stole that band name,” he said.

The Swedish pop duo fuses melancholic dance music with vocals and bass. “We listen to a lot of dance music. Although we are inspired by a lot of instrumentals, we want to focus on making pop music,” Duncanson said. Duncanson writes most of the songs, and Martin plays the guitar and bass. “We live in different cities, [so] I do a lot on my own. I write most songs and then play them for Martin,” Duncanson said. “Martin is better at playing guitar and bass.”

The Radio Dept. explores melancholic lyrics with vibrant pop music. Photo courtesy of Radio Dept.

Running Out of Love opens with their track “Sloboda Narodu,” which means “death to fascism, freedom to the people” in Serbo-Croatian. Duncanson heard about this expression in a Swedish documentary, which is what sparked his inspiration for the song. “The documentary was about a journalist travelling around old Yugoslavia, trying to find people who knew old partisan songs. The journalist came across a girl who sang the sloboda narodu slogan,” he said. “I didn’t know of this slogan before, and wanted to use it.” There have been political issues in Sweden concerning their gun trade for the past seven years, according to Duncanson. The duo wanted to use their musical talents to bring awareness to these issues. Duncanson said their track “Swedish Guns” has been misunderstood by many. “It’s been misinterpreted in the States as being a song about carrying a gun. That is not what it’s about. It’s about the arms industry,” he said.

Radio Dept.’s latest album, Running Out of Love.

According to Business Insider, Sweden exports arms and weapons to different countries around the world. “We have done it for a long time. I don’t know if people know this outside of Sweden, but this is something we are quite ashamed of,” Duncanson said. This issue is reflected in the lyrics of “Swedish Guns,” as Duncan sings, “Cause who can be to blame for Swedish guns? A clue, it’s in the name, a diabolic shame.” The song has a pop-dance rhythm, all while sharing a powerful political message. “We would like to make our money in some other way. It’s not a good feeling to sell weapons to other countries,” Duncanson said.

Running Out of Love has succeeded in fusing upbeat dance music with political lyrics. “We wanted to make our music slightly darker than before, but not too dark because we are optimists and hopeful people,” Duncanson said.The Swedish duo, currently on their North American tour, will be performing in Montreal at Théâtre Fairmount on March 6. Doors open at 7:30 p.m, and the show begins at 8:30 p.m. Tickets are $18 online or $20 at the door.