IDLES have released the official video for ‘Grace’, an AI recreation of Coldplay’s iconic ‘Yellow’ video, but with Chris Martin singing the words to this song instead.
The video sees Martin strolling down the same beach that he walked along for his own 2000 song, as night turns to day inside four minutes.
IDLES frontman Joe Talbot says the concept to use the Coldplay imagery for ‘Grace’ came to him in a dream, and he contacted Martin directly to ask for his permission. Martin not only agreed to it, but helped to train the AI software so that his new ‘performance’ would look more realistic.
Check out the video here:
“No god, no king, I said love is the thing,” sings Talbot during the track, showcasing IDLES’ new manifesto of love triumphing over nihilism.
The song was produced by Nigel Godrich (Radiohead, The Smile, Beck), Kenny Beats (Denzel Curry, Vince Staples, Benee) and the band’s Mark Bowen, as is the rest of the album.
“The song came from nowhere and everything. It was a breath and a call to be held,” Talbot has said, discussing the inspiration behind the song. “The only words or singing that came from our sessions with Nigel and I needed it, truly. All is love.”
Back in December, ‘Grace’ was the second track the band released to preview their fifth album ‘Tangk’, which comes out on Friday (February 16). The album’s other singles to date were ‘Dancer’, featuring LCD Soundsystem, and ‘Gift Horse’, which they performed on Fallon last week.
In a four-star review of the new album, NME wrote: “’TANGK’ is an adventure into pastures new. Talbot is keen to put arm’s length at the material that exorcises his past traumas and battles with addiction and general frustration at the modern malaise. Now’s a time of appreciation and restraint.
Speaking to NME about what fans should expect from ‘Tangk’, Talbot said late last year: “It’s our most vivid and our most accomplished songwriting. We’ve finished songs. A couple of songs on ‘CRAWLER’ were very much unfinished. That wasn’t through some sort of fear, but through a sense of poise. We were like, ‘This is going somewhere, but let’s not force it’. It was unfinished in the sense that it didn’t have a narrative arc and the musical lingo that we want, but what we did have were songs and parts that we fucking loved.”
“Now we have that under our belt and we’re able to create that arc and finish songs off,” he added. “We feel like we can move on, full stop.”
Earlier this month, Idles were also confirmed to be playing this year’s End of the Road Festival.
That appearance will be part of a long year of touring for the Bristol band, including a run of intimate UK gigs next month, a European leg, a long North American tour and a recently-extended UK headline tour towards the end of the year. Check out the latest inclusions to the UK tour here, which were added due to high demand.