IDLES have announced their new album, Crawler, which will be out November 12 via Partisan. The band made the record at Peter Gabriel's Read World Studios in Bath, England, during the pandemic, and it was coproduced by Kenny Beats (Vince Staples, Freddie Gibbs) and IDLES guitarist Mark Bowen.
The first single from the album is "The Beachland Ballroom," a soulful number featuring a powerhouse vocal from Joe Talbot. “It’s the most important song on the album, really," says Joe. "There's so many bands that go through the small rooms and dream of making it into the big rooms. Being able to write a soul tune like this made me go, fuck -- we’re at a place where we're actually allowed to go to these big rooms and be creative and not just go through the motions and really appreciate what we’ve got. The song is sort of an allegory of feeling lost and getting through it. It's one that I really love singing.” Adds Bowen, "“I didn’t know Joe could sing like that. He’s been trying to write ‘Be My Baby’ since the very beginning, but he didn’t want to be the punk guy wearing the Motown clothes. He wanted it to feel natural, and this song is.”