Long revered and rarely understood, IDAHO returns with Lapse (Arts & Crafts), their first album in over a decade — a raw, slow-burning document from a band that’s never played by the rules. Led by Laurel Canyon’s Jeff Martin, IDAHO has built a fiercely independent legacy over four decades, blending jagged tunings, ghostly textures, and vocals that cut with quiet intensity. Their sound is equal parts beauty and abrasion — fragile, distorted, defiantly out of step. Lapse rekindles the uneasy magic of their early work, while the recently released The Devil You Know box set reminds us just how far ahead of the curve they’ve always been. Still underground, still uncompromising — IDAHO is not here to chase the moment,  but to leave a mark that lingers.

“Because right from first taste, it was that IDAHO had immediately likable yet not simple tunes; ample hooks; sneaky melodies; contemplative parts both loud and quiet without jarring juxtaposition (like Nirvana was then borrowing from The Pixies); subtle squalls of background feedback; singer/songwriter Jeff Martin’s laconic vocalizing that nevertheless yielded to deeper passions; and most of all, overall damn-near different, surreptitiously strange guitar tones I couldn’t put my finger on…” – Jack Rabid (from The Devil You Know liner notes)

“This monolithic thing that’s literally scratching the sky as the sky is going by me. To me, that’s the sound, of a guitar moaning with feedback floating in the air cracking the air open as it’s sweeping through… Yeah, that’s what I think of when I think of IDAHO.” – Alan Sparhawk of LOW (from Traces Of Glory documentary)