Welcome (Idles EP)

Welcome is the debut extended play by Bristol punk rock band, IDLES. The extended play was released originally as a demo on 31 December 2011 before being released for the public on 4 August 2012 through independent label, Fear Of Fiction.

Welcome
EP by
IDLES
Released4 August 2012
RecordedFall 2011
GenrePost-punk revival
Length17:40
LabelFear Of Fiction
IDLES chronology
Welcome
(2012)		 Meat
(2015)
Singles from Welcome
  1. "26/27"
    Released: 27 June 2012

The extended play has been described as drastically different from their current work, as the sound of this EP has been compared to having a more cleaner, post-punk sound more akin to the likes of Interpol, Editors, and Radio 4.

Background

At the time of recording this album, the band was just a music duo, composed of singer Joe Talbot and bassist Adam Devonshire, who met while at College in Exeter, eventually deciding to start a band.[1]

IDLES have their roots in the Bat-Cave Night Club in Bristol, run by .According to Talbot, "It took us a long time to get productive because we didn’t know what the fuck we were doing at all, we were fucking terrible for a long time." The band's first release was the Welcome EP in 2012. By 2014 the band comprised Talbot, Devonshire, guitarists Mark Bowen and Lee Kiernan, and drummer Jon Beavis.[2] They released a second EP, Meat, and Meta, an EP of remixes, in 2015, and then started writing songs for their debut album.[1]

Critical reception

At the time of the EP, the band was still relatively unknown outside of the local music scene in their native Bristol.

Local music website Gold Flake Paint reviewed the album in a mixed review calling it mysterious. Write, Tom Johnson, summarized the EP as "across this impressive introduction Idles show glimpses of light and dark, restraint and release, and joy and sorrow; to the point where you’re never quite sure where you stand with them – and whether you are, in fact, welcome at all. Something tells us it’ll be worth sticking around to find out though."[3]

Track listing
No.TitleLength
1."26/27"5:23
2."Meydei"4:35
3."Germany"3:58
4."Two Tone"3:44
Total length:17:40

Legacy

Members of the band have stated in retrospect that they hate Welcome and feel that the direction of the extended play was aimless. Critics in retrospective reviews of the EP felt the album was too cautious and sounded too much like other post-punk revival bands rather than their own identity.[4] Of the time of recording and of the EP, Joe Talbot said that "it took us a long time to get productive because we didn’t know what the fuck we were doing at all, we were fucking terrible for a long time."[1]

Nevertheless, the album has been credited as an album that broke Idles into relevancy and fostered fans, although fans have been critical of the album. During a show in September 2018, a fan in the audience requested the band would play a song off of Welcome which was met from giggles and jeers from both people in the audience and members of the band.[5]

Talbot has also felt that Welcome did help the band find their feet in due time although he would not herald the album personally as a music accomplishment.[6]

gollark: Like I said, if you just break out all the various web bits into separate protocols, you then have to deal with irritating things like enforcing the same security on each, actually tying them together into one system to do what you want (because you quite plausibly want the file upload/download bits to be part of the same service), lots of open ports and possibly different server software, and implementing similar protocols over and over again.
gollark: No. They use multipart.
gollark: Share the authentication stuff.
gollark: One open port.
gollark: You can reuse a bunch of existing machinery.

References
  1. Hamilton, Joe (15 March 2017). "Brute Force: The Contrary World Of IDLES". Clash. Retrieved 21 November 2018.
  2. Murray, Eoin (2017) "Stendhal Syndrome: Idles Interviewed", The Quietus, 29 June 2017. Retrieved 8 July 2017
  3. Johnson, Tom. "Review: Idles - Welcome EP". GoldFlakePaint. Retrieved 21 November 2018.
  4. Wray, Dylan Daniel (22 March 2018). "Meet IDLES, Punk's Most Savage Good Boys". Noisey. Vice Media. Retrieved 21 November 2018. But he and the band held on. They’d taken a while to find their sound on EPs Welcome, from 2012, and Meat, released in 2015. “I wanted to sing,” Talbot says. “I wanted to sound like Otis Redding but I didn't; I sounded out of tune and shit. We were trying to sound like a different band every week, just to find our own voice. Then we started writing this music that was angry and visceral and we all became enthralled by it.” Welcome is very much the band in their identity-forming period, a little safer and more indie while on Meat the band begin to embrace the grit and growl that would go on to define Brutalism.
  5. Gourlay, Dom (12 September 2018). "Two Shows In One Day: The Unstoppable Rise of Idles". Drowned In Sound. Retrieved 21 November 2018.
  6. "Interview: IDLES". musicmusingsandsuch.wordpress.com. 15 November 2016. Retrieved 21 November 2018. Welcome was your debut E.P.; followed by Meat in 2015. What is, would you say, the biggest difference between the E.P.s in terms of sound and lyrical themes? Bowen: Sound-wise there was a clear progression. Welcome contains a lot of influences we had at the time and we were still trying to find our feet. Meat has Lee on it and sounds more like us. I wouldn’t listen to Welcome – it’s a bit beige for my tastes.
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