Maisie Cousins
Essential new albums from Idles and Anna Calvi are the highlights of New Music Friday today. Listen to both on Live4ever right here via Spotify.
‘None of them were watching about a million years ago when Idles released their first album Brutalism, although normal people were and they adored it’, Live4ever’s Joy As An Act Of Resistance review concludes.
“Tackling modern foibles from materialism to depression – two sides arguably of the same coin – a stoic precision made it the year’s most exhilarating release but, as Talbot now admits, the view was of someone outside looking in, any of the spirit locked down by passivity and the torpor of observation.”
“Joy As An Act Of Resistance was made by the same people, but that’s where most of the similarities end. Idles are naked on it, five men who have nothing left to hide but the insanity of happiness, people as musicians, musicians as people, all made from the same blood, bone and tears as everyone else. There are a million words you could write about it and there will be, but only one is really appropriate. That word? Hope.”
Anna Calvi, meanwhile, is also brimming with things to say on new album Hunter; “I’m hunting for something – I want experiences, I want agency, I want sexual freedom, I want intimacy, I want to feel strong, I want to feel protected and I want to find something beautiful in all the mess,” she’s said.
“Strip back rock and roll and you’ll find lust and sex – its name comes from it, after all”, Live4ever’s album review reads. “The Hunter is about all the other stuff we complicate it with and Anna Calvi has used it to come out from everything, including her own body.”
