Interview UNITY: how IDLES are forging a life-affirming community

Nights like this don’t come around too often. Across 2018, leading up to and in the wake of the release of the bombastic, vital ‘Joy As An Act Of Resistance’, and right up to tonight’s huge, sold-out show at London’s Kentish Town Forum, IDLES have cemented their place as the most important band in the UK right now. Don’t just take our word for it, either - there’s a 10,000-strong legion of fans (and they’re just the ones who’ve actively clicked ‘Like’) to whom ‘Joy…’ reads something like the Bible.

“We’re all a bit broken, a bit flawed and a bit damaged, but we feel like we’ve been fixed by IDLES,” says Louise Hughes, one of the admins of the fast-growing, band-approved AF Gang Facebook community. “For me - and it sounds corny, but I’m Miss Corny of the AF Gang and I can’t help it - I find that [Joe Talbot] is the people’s poet laureate. He says it how it is and he says what you think. We find that we have so much in common and it just makes me really emotional, the way we help one another. We are all strangers, but we’ve all been brought together by our unity and love for this band. Honesty is the way forward. It’s the only way you can be; wear your heart on your sleeve and be honest. It’s a beautiful thing. They just rip at your heartstrings. For ages I couldn’t listen to ‘Television’ without crying because of that one line: ‘Love yourself’.”

Starting out as a fan page purely set up to exchange stories, information and more about IDLES, the AF Gang has slowly but surely morphed into a manifestation of the band’s mission statement, a safe space to share vulnerabilities and worries as well as marvel at the togetherness that IDLES have fostered in so many. It also - almost too poetically to be true - gained its ten thousandth member on the 10th day of the 10th month of this year, on what also happened to be World Mental Health Day. “It’s grown in an elaborate way,” Brian Mimpress, who also admins the group, asserts emphatically. “Where it’s going to end, I don’t know. I said to Lindsay [Melbourne, another admin] the other day, I think the AF Gang will outgrow the band, unless they end up being The Rolling Stones and doing it when they’re in their seventies! I believe the AF Gang will be there forever now. I really do.”