Joe Talbot thanks Interpol mid-set, calling them “one of the main reasons”

IDLES singer Joe Talbot used the middle of their main stage set at Bilbao BBK Live 2026 to publicly name Interpol as “one of the main reasons I’m in a band.” Speaking to the Basque Country crowd midway through their Saturday (July 11) performance, Talbot told fans: “Thanks for making us feel so at home and so loved so far from home. It’s a dream to share a stage with one of the main reasons I’m in a band - Interpol and [Interpol’s touring member] Matt from The Walkmen. It’s a huge privilege and a fucking dream.”

That matters because Interpol were not just a background detail. Earlier that afternoon, Interpol played the same stage, helping bring the festival to a close alongside a headline performance from Spanish rapper Dellafuente, plus additional sets across the site including Lily Allen, HorsegiirL, Italo-disco duo Mind Enterprises and more. So when Talbot frames Interpol as a core reason he started a band, it is not a vague compliment. It is a live, day-of acknowledgment of influence delivered in the same venue where the festival’s closing arc was already underway.

This is the kind of moment festivals are built to manufacture: a chain reaction of audiences who came for one act but leave with a map of what shaped them. Bilbao BBK Live’s 20th anniversary year was explicitly framed as a high-octane, international mix, with David Byrne, Robbie Williams, FKA Twigs and CMAT among the weekend’s star names. In that ecosystem, Talbot’s shoutout works like an operating system update for fans. It tells them how to interpret the sound they are hearing, and it connects IDLES to a lineage that extends beyond genre playlists.

On the IDLES side, the set itself signaled the band’s current creative trajectory. The group opened with a blistering new song, ‘Levitator,’ described here as a hint towards their forthcoming sixth LP. According to the report, IDLES have been starting shows with the track throughout the summer. The song’s lyrical moments include Talbot calling out “racist c**ts” before the chorus unleashes a call to arms: “ Violence is majestic, coming from a righteous rage/ Violence is majestic when you’re coming of age.” Those lines are not written as gentle encouragement. They position the band’s new material as combative and energized, which is consistent with how IDLES have built their identity around confrontation and intensity.

The broader context is that IDLES are already in momentum mode heading into album six. Last month, guitarist Mark Bowen told NME the band were well underway with writing their “most exciting” album yet, and he hinted they were looking to go back to the sound of their earlier material. Bowen’s comment to NME, speaking on the red carpet at the Ivor Novello Awards, included the explanation that “We got back in the studio to write, and we’ve kinda gone - I don’t want to say back to basics because that’s cliche - but it’s a bit back to basics!” He also framed the process in terms that translate directly to how bands (and creative teams) keep output from going stale: “It’s five members in a room thrashing it out on instruments. Lots of arguments, [which is great because] if it’s too nice, then it’s not sick. It’s always more sick if someone is not getting what they want!”

For execs and board-level types, the second-order implications are pretty straightforward even if the domain is music, not finance. When a festival places Interpol in the closing slot and IDLES in the lead-in narrative, it is curating credibility across generations. The shoutout from Talbot gives that curation a human reason: influence, mentorship by example, and the legitimacy that comes from being able to say, out loud, “this shaped me.” In other industries, that same dynamic shows up when founders credit formative operators, when investors highlight lineage of playbooks, or when creators reference the artists who trained their taste.

And there is a strategic stake for anyone building attention in a crowded market. Bilbao BBK Live’s conclusion combined Interpol with Dellafuente and a range of site-wide acts including Lily Allen, HorsegiirL and Mind Enterprises, which suggests a deliberately dense booking strategy. That density matters because it forces discovery. Talbot’s message turns discovery into narrative. Fans are not just sampling sounds. They are learning why those sounds exist, and they hear it in the same venue, at the same pace, on the same day.

Finally, there is the “who else is being watched” angle. The report also notes that Mark Bowen was nominated alongside Florence Welch for Best Song Musically and Lyrically with the title track to Florence + The Machine’s latest album ‘Everybody Scream.’ That detail sits in the story like a reminder that creative influence travels both directions. IDLES credit Interpol; Bowen’s recognition ties the band’s ecosystem to mainstream songwriting prestige. If you are an operator, promoter, investor, or brand sponsor monitoring cultural capital, the take is not that awards replace streaming or that festivals replace algorithms. It is that credibility signals stack. They reinforce each other, and moments like Talbot naming Interpol on-stage at Bilbao BBK Live 2026 are how those signals become memorable enough to matter.