Songfacts®:

• This morose indie-rock tune finds Joe Talbot still clubbing and partying in his 30s. When the lights come on at the end of the night, the Idles frontman realizes he's outstayed his welcome.
  
  The hi-hats dance like a feather
  I'm in, I'm in a paralytic loveless dream
  Not a single face I've seen
  Is a friend I recognize or recognises me
• Years ago, Talbot met an older man hanging around with his friends. He couldn't understand what this guy's angle was until a long time later.
  
  For seven years, Talbot was a hip-hop DJ at a club in Bristol. By the end, he was the oldest in the room by a lot and it hit him that everyone else in his circle had moved on. Talbot only continued because of his drinking and drug habits.
  
  After one of Talbot's hip-hop nights finished, he went to a house party. "I was like, what am I doing here? I am That Guy," he recalled to Mojo magazine. "And I left. But addiction will do that. You'll excuse yourself into any sort of social pocket if it allows you to get wasted on drugs. The younger the groups, the easier it is to get away with drinking five nights a week."
• Talbot swaps his usual angry punk howl for thundering baritone vocals. "That song is directly influenced by late '70s and early '80s post-punk," he told Consequence Of Sound. "It kind of sounds like Bauhaus. That was the vibe from start to finish."
• Idles released "When The Lights Come On" as the third single from Crawler. The band recorded the album at Peter Gabriel's Real World Studios in Bath with Idles guitarist/keyboardist Mark Bowen and Kenny Beats in the producer's chair.
• Directed and edited by Idles guitarist Lee Kiernan and written by Talbot, the black-and-white video stars George Garratt of the Bristol noise-rock band Heavy Lungs.