IDLES Present New Single & Video “Gift Horse” & Announce UK ‘Outstore’ Shows

A new year comes around and IDLES are already ramping up anticipation for the 16th February release of their new album, TANGK, and the world tour that will follow it, and the band have now unveiled their new single, Gift Horse. The track continues to showcase the band’s ever-growing ambition with the new record, which has already been previewed by the mantric euphoria of Dancer and the soulful slowburner Grace. Gift Horse ups the intensity from the album’s previous singles, its lean, taut intensity balanced by an undercurrent of gristly grooves and stuttering, charismatic delivery from the always thought-provoking Joe Talbot. Yet for all its sinewy menace, it’s sensitive too: a testament to redemption, to finding something or someone that makes the worries of the world feel not just tolerable but motivating. Collectively TANGK celebrates love, communion and all of those powerful emotions that make existence worthwhile and Gift Horse is firmly in that lineage, declaring “All is love and love is all.”

Gift Horse is accompanied by a video which finds unity between the almost fantastical characters that lurk on the outskirts of society with the mundanity of day-to-day life. The setting in a supermarket, where a dead-eyed checkout man absentmindedly scans items while the rest of the store brims with surrealistic images: main character social media creators, people seemingly in the midst of a manic episode, an otherwise straightlaced preacher, and guitarist Mark Bowen taking a mechanical bull by the horns.

IDLES huge touring plans for the year ahead have already seen several shows sell-out almost a year in advance. Today also brings news that they will celebrate the release of TANGK by playing three intimate outstore shows, culminating with a homecoming gig at The Marble Factory in Bristol. Tickets for their outstore appeareances and world tour are on sale here.