IDLES recently released their newest single, “Gift Horse,” to accompany previous singles “Grace” and “Dancer” from the forthcoming album TANGK, which they announced in October and comes out on February 16. Bandleader Joe Talbot said in a statement, “Look at us go! Music and movement for you and yours. Be bold and ride us like the disco donkeys we are.”
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The song comes with an accompanying music video, which features a supermarket with increasingly bizarre scenes of violence, romance, dejection, apathy, and just plain tomfoolery. The band members are scattered throughout the video as various strange characters, with guitarist Mark Bowen riding a mechanical bull mirrored by Talbot out back holding a real bull on a lead while someone sprays the ground with a hose.
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IDLES Release Newest Single “Gift Horse,” are Firmly in Their Lover Boy Era on Upcoming Album TANGK
Musically, “Gift Horse” is IDLES’ usual explosive fare. It’s a familiar sound, but imbued with a little something different. There’s talk of love in the third verse, where Talbot sings, “My baby, she’s, she’s so raw / I give her love and she gives me more / Ask us to kneel and bow to the floor / She says ‘No’ and she ask ‘What for?’”
It’s possible the “she” in this verse is a literal person, but it’s also possible this verse is speaking of love itself. The speaker wants to believe in love so much that love becomes everything. “He ain’t the king, she’s the king,” the third verse ends, alluding to love being the end-all-be-all. Appropriate, since Talbot has previously announced that TANGK will be an album of love songs.
“I needed love,” Talbot wrote on social media in October. “So I made it. I gave love out to the world and it feels like magic. This is our album of gratitude and power. All love songs. All is love.” This statement is mirrored in “Gift Horse” in the line “All is love and love is all.” IDLES are in their lover boy era, apparently, and more power to them.
[RELATED: Listen: IDLES Release New Single, Announce Album ‘TANGK’]
In the description of the album via Rough Trade, IDLES has constantly squared up against the upper class, the entitled, and personal traumas. TANGK will be “the fruits of such perseverance: love, joy, and indeed gratitude for the mere opportunity of existence.”
Featured Image by Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images for The Recording Academy
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