• News

• All

Nov 03, 2021 By Joey Arnone Photography by Tom Ham

IDLES have shared a video for their new song “Car Crash.” It is the latest release from their forthcoming fourth studio album, CRAWLER, which will be out on November 12 via Partisan. Watch the video below.

Frontman Joe Talbot speaks about the song in a press release, stating: “It’s the horrific, comedown hangover—waking up in the morning and realising the smashes, like, what the fuck am I doing with my life?”

Guitarist Mark Bowen adds: “We wanted it to be as violent as possible to reflect that event. I really wanted it to be this sonic touchstone. We recorded the drums beforehand and put them on a vinyl acetate. Whenever you replay an acetate, because it is kind of like a liquid, it degrades every time. It touches on things being transient and momentary—even a single drum hit. It’s like a memory, when the moment has passed and you deal with the repercussions over and over again, and they morph and change into something else. It’s one of the first times on an IDLES song where we used proper effects on the vocals—it was Joe going through my pedal board, so you get both clarity and degradation.”

The video, edited by guitarist Lee Kiernan, features footage taken from artist Matthew Cusick’s video art piece File on Motor Transgression, 2001-2011, a montage of more than 500 car crashes taken from various films. Cusick states in a press release: “It is a gut wrenching, symbiotic conclusion to the piece. It has now what it was always missing…a killer soundtrack.”

Upon announcing the release of CRAWLER in September, the band shared a video for its lead single, “The Beachland Ballroom.”

Support Under the Radar on Patreon.