“Mother” by IDLES
By Natalie Silver
IDLES’ song “Mother” is the knockout punch of the British rock band’s 2017 debut album Brutalism and titled after the woman featured on the album’s cover. And no, she is not Mike Pence’s wife.
That said, it should be noted that I am no authority on what Pence himself thinks of the number. Perhaps the ragingly loud and testosterone heavy wails bring him… pleasure?
Frontman Joe Talbot and bassist Adam Devonshire joined forces in Bristol, UK in 2009 bonding over intellectual and artistic camaraderie and the primal energies of rebellion at the University of the West of England. Gaining momentum, the two eventually collected guitarists Mark Bowen and Lee Kiernan and drummer Jon Beavis, ultimately forming the five-piece band which released its first EP, Welcome, in 2012.
IDLES, in classic, snarling punk fashion, will rip your head off if you label them as a punk band. Though the rest of the group’s discography may be more reflective of the alternative, genre-transcendent, uncategorizable sound with which the band more closely identifies, “Mother,” itself, is a direct salute to the rejected genre’s Founding Fathers such as The Clash and the Sex Pistols, and stands out as a pure punk number in its structure, delivery, and lyrical debauchery.
So much punk has to be seen live to unlock the magic, tune you in, hook you, make you hear the lyrics in the way that they were intended to be. The live experience is almost always essential to creating an intimate relationship to the soul of punk—a self-righteous brand of anger delivered by volume, lyrics and vocal inflection, and a palpable capacity for total annihilation.
With IDLES, however, I somehow bypassed that live experience. As soon as I heard “Mother,” I was in. I was in, I wanted more, and more than anything else, I had questions. Who are these guys… and why do I unflinchingly take their word as gospel?
It takes a certain brilliance to create a psychological crescendo throughout an entire punk song with the same drum section, five power chords, a repeating series of three note licks, and what are basically four lines of lyrics (minus one eerie, yet sing-songy, bridge)—one of which is “motherfucker” on repeat.
Despite the technical simplicity of the song’s musical and lyrical fabrics, with every listen I continue to find myself floored by its intangible and mysterious genius. “Mother” has a consistently increasing buildup that keeps the listener hooked and angry and interested throughout the entire song without ever actually reaching the tension’s ultimate fruition. Instead, the song ends in brilliant exasperation, the last “motherfucker” fading out and morphing into an electric whir answerless to the anxieties and questions bellowed by Talbot throughout the song.
Part of the reason punk, post-punk, and hardcore music often gets bashed is for what is perceived as its elementary musicality—the debauchery aside. A genre that uses repetition, volume, and sonic expressions of aggression, such as screams, bashing and heavy rhythmic sections, to produce its dynamism is rarely celebrated for its complex and cerebral motive.
Yet this invisibility is, in and of itself, the brilliance of the punk genre. Its raging expression is a rejection of global capitalism, using cacophony as an active form of resistance to the innocent harmony and millefleur of pop music that is produced by the music industry’s plastic idealism.
Punk is the ultimate “fuck you” to Beethoven and Hannah Montana and everything in between. It successfully achieves a musical and political excellence of its own by channeling a certain rage and desperation specific to the genre and its special audience—one defined by their loyalty to the movement and to the personal struggles that drove them there in the first place.
When that motive itself becomes greater than the sum of its parts and creates something musically interesting and aesthetic and beautiful… where are you supposed to go from there? What else are you supposed to do besides listen? When you do listen, the next step will become clear.
It’s scary. But it’s music.
Natalie Silver is a native Californian who recently graduated from UC Berkeley with a degree in Media Studies. She believes that the critical millennial voice is the most prolific threat to contemporary systems of oppression, and she would rather die than work in tech. Alas, she fell into independent journalism.
