IDLES, the extremely popular British rock band with great response energy, are running up to the release of their new album Ultra Mono. They have already shared three songs from the LP – “Mr. Motivator, “” Grounds, “and” A Hymn “- and today they share a fourth, complete with a video by legendary director Michel Gondry.
Gondry, the French surrealist best known Ivich Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, has deep connections with the music world. He directed Dave Chappelle’s Block Party and iconic music videos for a long list of artists including Björk, Daft Punk, Foo Fighters, Radiohead, the Chemical Brothers, and many more. (He also made a White Stripes video that my colleague Tom Breihan presented as a body double for Conan O’Brien. Now not really, you can still read his two-part diary about the experience.)
Now he has applied his unique perspective to ‘Model Village’, the dance floor new IDLES single. Gondry collaborated with his brother Olivier Gondry and WeTransfer to create a bizarre animated sequence. “A lot of nine fingered boys in the village,” Joe Talbot begins in his muscular bark, before writing down many other observations about that village. To the chorus he cries out, “I beg your forgiveness / I do not like your rose garden / I have listened to the things you said / You just sound like you’re scared to death.”
See below.
Ultra Mono is from 9/25 on Partisan. Pre-order it here.
