Idlewild - opinions?

Is this pre or post "what the hell is Stipe saying he sounds like he got a mouth full of cotton???"

Classic, the new album is Grate.

Every face Even the one you saw yesterday It looks different today 'Cos everything's changed since yesterday In every possible way Things seem different today Not like yesterday

Yet I do still like them, even if they do sound incredibly like REM. They could sound disturbingly like Stereophonics instead. But they don't. Which is quite good.

If I'd heard any new material, I'd probably start a new thread, but I haven't, so here we find ourselves.

I've always had a soft spot for Roddy Woomble and his noisome chums, and equally always had some respect for Parlophone's long-termist approach to them - so anomalous with guitar bands/majors. Great voice, an occasionally fearsome noise, interesting lyrics...hmmm?

Their new tour seems to be acoustic only, so I guess we can expect less lovely racket and more REM-ish (by which I mean, considerably superior to REM) folksy introspection.

ihttp://www.parlophone.co.uk/mailer/idlewild/idlewild_gigs.jpg

Anyone heard the new stuff?

(rhetorical, eh?)

(xpost)

It's super compressed and sounds a bit like muffled ass, but it would seem a decent song after a couple listens (if exactly the same as everything else they've ever done)

Am I the only person who thinks 100 Broken Windows is their best album? I love that disc all the way through.
And the first single from the last album is amazing - "You Held the World in Your Arms" -- damn it, I need to play that now.

100 BW is my favourite album of theirs too, but "self healer" remains their very finest moment to my ears.

please can you write something as interesting and non-derivative as the stuff off 'Captain'?

Yours sincerely,

Everybody.

IDLEWILD'S "WARNINGS/PROMISES"

OUT IN U.S. AUGUST 16!

BELOVED SCOTTISH QUINTET TO RELEASE

FIRST ALBUM WITH NEW LINEUP

(New York, NY) - Scottish quintet Idlewild will release their fifth album, Warnings/Promises, in the U.S. on August 16th. The album is the first to feature the band's new lineup with bassist Gavin Fox and longtime touring guitarist Allan Stewart and was produced by Tony Hoffer (Beck, Air, Phoenix).

Warnings/Promises sounds like the work of a new band, and it is. It's their first album to be written collaboratively as a five-piece, and its songs -- although clearly Idlewild songs in essence -- are broader, richer and more ambitious. It's the sound of this former punk band's confidence finally flowering, its mad buzz of ideas coming suddenly into focus.

"We were introduced to Britain as a brash punk band, and first impressions do last," says frontman Roddy Woomble. "But in America we've always been perceived as a vaguely arty, literate rock band and I suppose that's closer to the truth."

That may explain why the nomadic Woomble moved to New York City's East Village during the writing of Warnings/Promises. "Norman Mailer said everyone should live in New York for six months, so I did," he explains. And Woomble and the group got to see much of America from its mega-stages, touring with Pearl Jam and acquiring a taste for stadium rock done right.

Idlewild retreated to their Edinburgh practice space with a new inter-band chemistry, notebooks crammed with ideas and a collaborative songwriting process in which the group simply sat down with acoustic guitars and wrote new songs from the bottom up, taking bare-boned hunks of melody and ideas and slowly working them into the tracks which would constitute the new album.

Once in their Edinburgh practice space the band simply sat down with acoustic guitars and notebooks filled with ideas, writing songs together from the bottom up. The new lineup immediately yielded changes - the addition of Gavin's vocals allowed the band to write three-way harmonies for the first time, and Allan's guitar would give new character to the instrumental arrangements, freeing up founding guitarist Rod Jones to follow his own more expansive flights of fancy.

The resulting songs were very much from Idlewild, but draw from a broader field of influences than before -- most notably Roddy's love of country and folk and the unleashing of the band's innate rock beast (particularly on the squalling acid blues of "I Want a Warning") - all things never fully demonstrated before. And Roddy's lyric book eschews its more abstract gestures for more direct words wanting very much to be heard.

"This album's very easy to understand," says Woomble. "There's nothing cryptic about it at all. I like storytellers and I think people appreciate a plot. Life's just a collection of stories."

New songs in hand, the band repaired to L.A.'s Sunset Sound with producer Tony Hoffer, and otherwise embarked on the best summer of their lives - sharing a house with a swimming pool and lemon trees in the Hollywood Hills.

The songs were slowly whittled down to the dozen songs on Warnings/Promises and recorded with grand vision and a pulsing heart. From the slow-burn anthem of opener "Love Steals Us From Loneliness," Idlewild announce their new sound with a dense crunch of sunny melancholic harmonies and fine folk melody spun over deeply intertwined guitars. What follows mixes arty blare, bittersweet pop, and the raw embers of Americana - sometimes within a single song.

Idlewild, Warnings/Promises

1. Love Steals Us From Loneliness
2. Welcome Home
3. I Want a Warning
4. I Understand It
5. As If I Hadn't Slept
6. Too Long Awake
7. Not Just Something but Always
8. The Space Between All Things
9. El Capitan
10. Blame It on Obvious Ways
11. Disconnected
12. Goodnight

Idlewild is:

Roddy Woomble - vocals
Rod Jones - guitar/vocals
Gavin Fox - bass/vocals
Allan Stewart - guitar
Colin Newton - drums

Three words that do not describe the record in any way, shape or form. Boring-er. Plodding-er. Serious comfort-zone indie noodlings slide guitar earnestness wake me when it's over.

They really were great, once upon a time.

I pretty much hated The Remote Part as well. So really only like 100 Broken Windows as I never heard their first album.

nice packaging.

Why did i sell 100 br0k3n whatever

-- Mr. Snrub

Maybe, but it was a great song. And better than a lot of latter day REM singles.

i liked 100 Broken Windows a lot, and parts of the one before it (i forget the name). i warmed up to the remote part eventually once i accepted that it was basically 'jimmy eat scotland', but my enjoyment of it was always a bit hedged. from what i've heard of the new one, it seems my days as a fan may be winding down. idlewild, welcome to aor hell.

listening to 'captain' has reminded me what exciting music sounds like

have spent a lot of time with woomble's my secret is my silence and the woomble/drever/mcclusker discs over the last week or so - boy oh boy is it good - a lot of heart, great musicianship, and of course woombles vocals - anyone else like this stuff?? --

Saw Idlewild live last year, luckily for free. I say luckily cos at one point there was a 5min+ dual guitar solo that nearly made me walk out. But they did play a random 100BW era bside which made up for it, almost. I loved them when in was 19/20, but they seem very dull now.

I actually like their latest record.

Awful lyrics. 'These Wooden Ideas' has to be one of the worst songs of all time in every respect.

http://sickmouthy.com/2013/03/17/idlewild-100-broken-windows-2000/

roddy's solo record is not especially good