What happens when one of the most intense bands in modern punk collides with one of the most boundary-pushing directors in cinema? The answer lies in Caught Stealing, Oscar nominee Darren Aronofsky’s upcoming crime caper, which not only features original music by the GRAMMY-nominated IDLES, but also weaves their feral energy into its DNA.
Set in the raw underbelly of 1990s New York, Caught Stealing stars Academy Award nominee Austin Butler as a down-and-out ex-baseball player thrown into the middle of a violent mess he doesn’t understand. Matching the film’s grit, tension and dark humor is a soundtrack created in close collaboration between Aronofsky, composer Rob Simonsen, and IDLES. The British quintet contributed original songs and performed throughout the score, adding muscle, momentum, and menace to the film’s soundscape.
To announce their contribution to the film’s sonic vision, the Bristol punks — frontman Joe Talbot, guitarists Mark Bowen and Lee Kiernan, bassist Adam Devonshire, and drummer Jon Beavis — released "Rabbit Run." The blistering, tension-building song perfectly encapsulates the gritty energy of the 1990s New York punk scene.
Speaking about his decision to have the band contribute to the film’s score and soundtrack, Aronofsky shared: "I built Caught Stealing to be a roller coaster of fun and wanted to supercharge the film by mainlining a punk sensibility. I don’t think a band has really been tasked with performing a score for a movie. Who better to collaborate with than IDLES? It has been a dream watching them bend their notes to blast a hole in our movie screen."
According to the composer Simonsen, IDLES were able to shape the score around their unique sonic identity. Building that score around the raw textures IDLES craft through feedback, distortion and inventive pedal work was both a creative challenge and a rewarding experience.
"It felt beautiful to be able to live out a dream that I didn't even know was a dream," Talbot says of working on the Caught Stealing score and soundtrack. "If you make what you love and you seek to be fluent in your own language, you become a magnet for those things you love, and you end up surrounded by the peers that you once worshipped."
Ahead of the film’s release on Aug. 29, Talbot caught up with GRAMMY.com to discuss collaborating with his filmmaking heroes, always being open to learning, and the importance of believing in your truth.
In a press release for Caught Stealing, you called this link up a "lucid dream." How did the collaboration with Darren Aronofsky come about?
We met through Jimmy Fallon. We were both on the show on the same night, and he came and introduced himself, and was very kind and complimentary. I studied film and he is one of my favorite directors, so I was in awe of the situation. I thought he was just being nice and polite by coming up to us, but turns out he genuinely was a fan and he came to see us.
Fast forward a little while: We stayed in contact and we hung out a bit, which would have been enough for me, really. It was amazing and inspiring, and he then approached us with the script, and I read it, and the rest is history.
This is a massive moment for IDLES, especially stepping into new uncharted territory.
It’s incredible. When you’re a creative person, especially coming from a place of addiction and trauma — things that are sometimes celebrated within rock 'n' roll and other genres like hip-hop — there’s a sense of emotional maturity that has to come first [before the creative work].
As an artist, one of the things that comes with maturity is that you end up seeking the company of people with purpose. People who are in love with what they do and are willing to sacrifice comfort for something greater.
I’ve found myself, now and again, being given the gift of working with people who have a serious purpose. Obviously, as a fan and a student, hanging with [Aronofsky] was incredible.You start to understand how you get s— done.
How you learn your creative language, and how you become fluent in it, is with practice — and by making sure you’re surrounded by people you trust and who work hard at their narrative, whatever that is. So that was really inspiring.
But it’s more than just a huge opportunity, right? It’s a once-in-a-lifetime thing …
It is a once-in-a-lifetime thing. I'm someone who always practices gratitude, and for me, that means waking up every day and being present in the fact that I have all four limbs, a beautiful child, an incredible bunch of friends and an incredible career. I get to do the job that I love and am surrounded by people I love, and that's a dream. But this is quite hard to grasp.
I would have ripped someone's arm off to just tour Europe 15 years ago, and now all of this. It's very cool.
You guys created four original tracks for the film, including the lead single "Rabbit Run." How closely did you work with the script or scenes to shape the song’s energy and message?
I wrote all the songs based off the script. I don’t know how any other band would’ve done it — it doesn’t really matter — but for us, it was a huge opportunity to do something creative for someone we love creatively.
I set myself new challenges. I wrote nine songs for the film, and four were included. I eventually want to make a film myself — I studied film, I like writing dialogue and things like that — so I think really visually when I’m songwriting. As I read the script, I pictured the pace in my head, and from that, got a sense of the songs’ rhythm and tone. I also started referencing films that felt similar just from reading it.
I was thinking French Connection, and films like that. I started working on funk breaks and cutting them up — like sampling your own writing. Beyond that, it was about painting a picture. It was kind of hard without seeing the film, but that gave me room to create the palette. It was about tension and constant momentum. "Rabbit Run" and "Cheerleader" kind of wrote themselves. It’s just that sense of movement and friction playing against each other.
It was a huge gift. There are maybe one or two other directors who would be as much of a dream to work with, but Darren is in my top three — maybe my favorite. He’s a very smart man and understood that we were perfect for the job. He’s a fan of us, but more than that, filmically and creatively it works really well — there’s humor, there’s violence, and there’s a sense of subversive friction and disdain for fascism. And we love cats.
One of your songs soundtracks a major car chase scene in the film. How does it feel to have a track almost serve as a prominent character during a massive moment like that?
It was crazy. I went to New York to watch the film in the studio because they weren’t sending it out. It was the first cut, and what I didn’t realize was that Darren was also watching it for the first time.
Personally, it takes a while to compute stuff like that. It didn’t feel like a lot in the moment. I was watching critically, because I still had loads of work to do. I was seeing these songs go in, but they weren’t mixed or cut properly yet.
So they were the raw recordings?
Yeah, but they were in there, and I'm sitting next to my favorite director — this might sound arrogant, but it felt right. I haven’t been making art my whole life, but I’ve been working toward this for a long time, over 20 years.
To sit on a sofa with Darren, I don’t feel like an equal. As a person, I do, when we’re having coffee or talking about gardening. But when I see his work, his achievements, his fluency — or at least how accomplished his language is — I know I’ve still got a lot to learn. I felt humbled to be there, but I also felt like it was the right fit. I knew I could do the songs and the film justice.
Was there a moment in the scoring process that really surprised you — either emotionally or creatively — in terms of what IDLES was capable of?
There was a steep learning curve. [Mark] Bowen, the other songwriter, and I both talk about writing songs visually, using adjectives like dark, light, wide, deep, sharp.
We create landscapes with our albums and a narrative arc, so our connection comes through a visual language. Bowen and I read the script and created a musical landscape from that; that part was easy. Then Darren, being Darren, said, "Great, love it. Do you want to do the score?" We were like, 'F—ing hell, yeah, of course."
Luckily, we mostly played Rob Simonsen's score. We had some original stuff, but we ended up doing something Kenny Beats would do — we worked with him on our last two records — which is to go in with the mindset that no matter how much experience you have, you can always learn from the people around you.
Not just because Rob is an incredible composer and writer, but because he's an artist, and if there's someone else in the room with ideas, you can learn from that.
Rob Simonsen described you guys as "an orchestra" for this score. What was that collaborative process like?
It was a space we’d never ventured into before, it was easy to be the passenger, so to speak. We had the driving wheel, and Rob had the map; we were steering based on where he told us to go.
As far as seeing us as an orchestra, metaphorically, it’s just fewer people. I’m probably the most ego-driven — not egomaniacal, just sensitive and insecure — and I try to paint those things out as a mirror for the audience so I can become more secure and stop being a prick. The other guys don’t work through ego as much. But as a band, we’re very egoless, eager to learn, and happy to collaborate. We always know there’s more to learn.
It was a beautiful learning curve. We were students in that sense, and it was easy. Instruments are instruments — technically, we are an orchestra. No one’s singing, and by the end, you’re layering things. It’s all just semantics. We were there to make it as viscerally ours as possible through Rob’s songwriting. It’s his music, our sound — and it was a beautiful, easy process for us.
Were there any nerves or fears that were dealt with after IDLES were asked to define the sonic identity of this film?
No. I would have been nervous if I didn’t enjoy the script. I don’t get nervous — I get anxiety, but not around music or art. I think anxiety and nervousness around art come from dishonesty. You have to fully believe in your truth. There’s no truth with art and music, just your truth, and if you believe in yours, there’s nothing to be nervous about.
This opportunity came at a point where we could take it on because we weren't touring, and we thought we were going to finish the album, but we’ve got some more work to do on that, so that's cool. But to do it again, yes, 100 per cent. I can’t wait to do another soundtrack.