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Live Review
by SaschaS
27-1-2005
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| Idlewild's Roddy Woombles takes it easy |
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Live: Idlewild
Shaw Theatre, London
Wednesday, January 26, 2005
Idlewild: mello-duz-it for Scotsmen
Unplugged works, sometime. Like last night, when Idlewild toned it down, got a violinist onstage and played an intimate show. On the brink of - well, just over five weeks - the band releasing its 5th album but this wasn’t a promotion of it. It was an event when the songs were the stars…
For a rockist band, this was an unusual setting - the stage was adorned as a baroque bordello with fairy lights, candles and lampshades - with seated audience but they coped more than well. Roddy Woomble, the energetic front man restrained himself to delivering vocals that…
Well, the thing is that he has a quality of voice that is very close to Morrissey’s which in this environ becomes even more obvious and a tad too much because he rarely leaves it behind bar on ‘El Capitan’ and ‘Goodnight’. The new single, ‘Love Steals Us From Loneliness’ - what a marvellous song title for the difference from “a fairly pure title”, as Woomble commented, of ‘Disconnected’ - appears to nod towards REM before turning into a sizeable anthem.
Majority of the songs were obviously slowed down and had guitar solos take a night off but that wasn’t the only change, new arrangements provided members with an opportunity to display talents for some other genres/instruments: Rod Jones supplied harmonies and folkish guitar, drummer Colin Newton played accordion on ‘Safe and Sound’…
A cover of Vashti Bunyan’s Winter is Blue’ was a welcome addition to the repertoire where ‘You Held The World In Your Arms’ still appears to be the most favoured song in the band’s arsenal. Fairly unjust because band has so many great tunes in the set that closes with the eternal beauty of a lullaby for all seasons [‘Goodnight’].
Idlewild, whose previous disc ‘The Remote Part’ climbed to the 3rd spot amidst the albums, are in a sort of precarious position: although they’ve never chased fads, it feels that their brand of music is more traditional than the prevailing sensibility of Coldplay, Snow Patrol and Athlete [as per new album, ‘Tourist’, out on Monday - our review up on Tuesday]… Perhaps, they would be happier if Blur were still ruling the Brit-scene and Mansun were still dealing in variations…
For Idlewild, it is getting lonely out there…
SaschaS
27-1-2005
Idlewild’s album 'Warnings/Promises' is released 07 March 2005 by Parlophone
'Love Steals Us From Loneliness' single is issued 21 February 2005
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