Consumer Guide Album

Idles: Joy as an Act of Resistance [Partisan, 2018]
Cognitive dissonance meets blunt force trauma via five guys who don't need Donald Trump to rail against fascism--not with Brexit, Eton, and bankers at a funeral for inspiration. What's dissonant is that you wouldn't figure from all this baritone bellow and jackboot four-four how much political rage they direct at sexism--the first three songs attack what "Samaritans" later brands "the mask of masculinity." It's like Joe Talbot's vocals are the male equivalent in reverse of Snail Mail or Lucy Dacus embracing sad femininity in gender solidarity. Though Talbot insists the Idles aren't a punk band, his unrelenting politics do remind one that he lacks both Joe Strummer's stealth tenderness and John Lydon's wormwood sarcasm. But a warmth suffuses "Danny Nedelko," about a Ukrainian pal who stands as Zanzibar-born Freddy Mercury's immigrant brother, and "June," all tender love for his stillborn daughter. And what kind of rage freak would be so tickled to cover Solomon Burke's "Cry to Me"? A-