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Album Review
by SaschaS
9-3-2005
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| Idlewild's 'Warnings/Promises'/delight |
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Idlewild: 'Warnings/Promises'
(Parlophone)
Idlewild - fifth step to sound devotion
If the worldwide record industry needs a lesson in patience - that pays great dividends - it should look no further than Idlewild. On their fifth album ‘Warnings/Promises’ the Scottish band shows maturity that seemed light-years from their grasp on the maiden disc. Well, a genius may be able to pick something up instantly but the rest of us have to work at it: songwriting is a craft that can be perfected.
Idlewild are about to graduate their apprenticeship with a set of songs that defies the current obsession with hardly a decade old nostalgia. It is a record that provides indie rock with some spacious, folksy-like moments and instrumentation… It’s been oft-said but it is true - it sound like early REM without actually aping the Atlanta band’s oeuvre.
But, it could have been the end of the road: after the abrupt departure of bassist Bob Fairfoull mid-tour in 2003, Idlewild could have disintegrated. Instead they bounced back with impressive haste and finished the tour with guitar tech Alex Grant. Now the Scots are back with a new, five strong line-up - completed by new arrivals Gavin Fox and Allan Stewart - and a new album, the melodic, philosophical 'Warnings/Promises'.
Roddy Woomble is still the band’s leading light and it is easy to see why current bands - Kaiser Chiefs, Bloc Party, The Others - cite Idlewild as an influence. The reason is instantly confirmed with the ‘Warning/Promises’ album’s lead single, 'Love Steals Us From Loneliness' that looks at "The way that people react to each other and what makes them do that. All these terms that we apply to each other that are so definite, like love and loneliness and warnings and promises," Woomble explains.
There is also an array of tunes that spread from a bluesy-paranoid 'I Want A Warning' to the optimistic ‘Too Long Awake’ to the U2-like anthemic ballad ‘Not Just Sometime But Always’ to the philosophically inquisitive ‘The Space Between All Things’… Between rocking and rolling is 'Disconnected' with its sense of isolation and imagining an escape from a situation… The disc concludes with ‘Goodnight’, a lullaby of two distinct sections.
In the cultural climate where sawn-on patch of retro-worship is all the vogue - from Shoe-gazing Wave to Brit-pop - Idlewild may be viewed as pseudo-intellectual, brooding, ‘downers’, but this is thinking man’s pop we‘d rather have than three Franz Fuct!
Idlewild are a [loud rock] band reborn and stars masses have yet to wake up to!
9/10
Tour dates:
05 April - Northumbria University, Newcastle
06 April - Royal Court, Liverpool
07 April - Guildhall, Southampton
08 April - Hexagon, Reading
10 April - Carling Academy, Bristol
11 April - Dome, Brighton
13 April - Shepherds Bush Empire, London
15 April - Leas Cliffe Hall, Foklstone
17 April - Rock City, Nottingham
18 April - Corn Exchange, Cambridge
19 April - UEA, Norwich
21 April - Octagon, Sheffield
22 April - Victoria Hall, Stoke
23 April - Academy, Manchester
24 April - Carling Academy, Birmingham
26 April - University, Leeds
28 April - Ambassador, Dublin
29 April - Mandela Hall, Belfast
01 May - Music Hall, Abereen
02 May - Barrowlands, Glasgow
03 May - Usher Hall, Edinburgh
SaschaS
9-3-2005
Idlewild’s album ‘Warning/Promises’ is released 07 March 2005 by Parlophone
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