Idlewild - Everything Ever Written

When you get to a certain age, things begin to change. Your body, your mind, your tastes for all sorts of things. You discover that sprouts aren’t the food of the devil.  That you can’t have 8 pints of beer and be fine in the morning. That you can’t eat and drink whatever you like and remain svelte and lean without joining the gym or running a few miles every day, and that, actually staying in on a Saturday night, with the cat on your lap, listening to the Blind Faith album is actually one of the most enjoyable things you can imagine.

 

When you are in your late teens and early twenties, you like to go out, you like things loud and brash, and colourful and new. As you get older, you slow down, become introspective, discover the quieter things in life, settle down and buy lots of brown and beige clothes.

 

I can remember when Idlewild appeared on the pages of NME and Melody Maker in the late 90’s. ‘Film for the Future’ was the first thing I heard. It was exciting, loud, thrashy, angry and the album it appears on, “Hope is Important”, was the same. I discovered the mini-LP “Captain” and that was even more urgent and furious. Possibly a bit too furious. The dark, grainy footage of gigs that their music videos consisted of looked like a riot, and not in a good way. Well maybe a good way, but that would depend on your point of view about riots. I didn’t mind a mosh pit but the crowd surfers did become irritating and the circle pits where kids beat the crap out of each other were ridiculous.

 

This week Idlewild released “Everything Ever Written”. 20 years since Roddy, Colin and Rob first got together and made a racket in Edinburgh, the in between has changed them, almost unrecognisably. Roddy used to scream down the microphone, now his careful, Scottish lilt binds the considered, accompaniment that once was the thunderous roar of punk guitars and bass.

 

The album still has its moments, opener ‘Collect Yourself’ rolls in on a faded, scuzzy guitar arpeggio, drifts into feedback and then a massive blast of guitar and bass smacks you in the face as the song kicks into a riff of bagpipe sounding guitar. Generally though, the folk music that Roddy has embraced since their hiatus in 2009 influences everything, with the addition of instrumentalists playing bass hooks and Hammond organ that lifts this record to a new level.

 

In the same period, I have changed. Idlewild opened a number of doors for me, and punk kicked the hinges off. From your usual American bands like Green Day, Offspring to more obscure stuff like The Vandals, NOFX and Me, First and the Gimme Gimmes and even British punk like Snuff, I even dipped a toe into Nu and old Metal, like Tool, Rage against the Machine, Perfect Circle and Limp Bizkit (in fairness, Significant Other is actually pretty good). Those records have been relegated to a box that is rarely opened. The mellowing effect of age has seen the tides change and I’m far more partial to the folk scene Roddy has immersed himself in. Acoustic guitar and piano features far more than they did back in my college and Uni days and the same can be said for Idlewild.

 

If you bought the new record through the Pledge Music site, you will have received a live album of a gig they did as part of their acoustic tour of the Highlands last year. All harmony and string soaked interpretations of their hits encompassing ‘Little Discourage’ and ‘The Quiet Crown’ through ‘You held the world in you arms’ and ‘American English’ to cuts from the new record in ‘Every Little means Trust’, ‘So many things to decide’ and ‘Nothing I can do about it’, it feels like you are being taken on a journey of the past 17 years but in a retrospective vision of that time clothed in the modern day style. It’s Idlewild today looking back at the Idlewild of yesterday.

 

If anything, it’s better this way. The 17 to 21 year old me might disagree with the 33 year old typing this, but this morning, this older and chubbier me followed this live recording with the latest Beck and Laura Marling. The younger me may well have put Terrorvision or Symposium on his Walkman. Although I have both of these bands on my Ipod still.

 

As I’ve changed, so have Idlewild. This album perfectly encapsulates the echo of the those early releases, keeps the anthemic, epic sprawling rock of ‘The Remote Part’ and arrives in the present with the new band members and new Idlewild. They are still fond of a distortion pedal, where the aforementioned album opener hits you like a tonne of bricks, they have 'Another Planet' which harks back to the good old days of writing a perfect 3 minute pop song like they used to. However, they have created a patchwork of instruments and influences across the four sides of vinyl I'm listening to, there's the organ, strings, brass, piano and apparently a filing cabinet on "Like a Clown".

 

There is some sublime song writing on this record, the break has reinvigorated the band and the addition of  Andrew Mitchell and Luciano Rossi has given them a new dynamic.

 

In a recent interview, they said that the name was perfectly vague and meaningless to meet the tradition of Idlewild. If it is unintended then it serendipitous. This is Idlewild in a nut shell. Everything they’ve ever written.

Leeds: the centre of the universe for the UK music scene

It was a week and weekend of contrasts. On Thursday, I was in Reading, at the Oakford Social Club, a fairly sizeable bar with a small stage and standing area that splits the place in two, to see the mighty Desperate Journalist. Fresh from the album launch of their eponymous debut, they rocked up to the first night of a new weekly slot showcasing new bands. They were devastating in their delivery. Tight rhythm section holding together the jangly 12-string guitar, that also mixes the angular hooks of new wave, and the powerful, biting vocals. As it always is with Reading crowds, they stood there watching, waiting to be blown away. The thing was, they were, but they didn't seem to know it. People will be, people who want to be. Desperate Journalist have what it takes to turn heads and people will take notice. Most strikingly is that the live experience captures perfectly the wall of noise on the record. Or is it visa versa?

Come Friday, I was jumping motorways up north to Manchester, where Elbow were taking up residence at the Apollo, before they dashed south and did the same in Hammersmith. A packed theatre of souls, half of us drinking in the lest often played Mexican Standoff and Any Day Now and the other half there to sing along to One Day Like This, and then get back to drinking the overpriced beer and talking about their week.

In either instances, I was struggling to concentrate on the band I was there to see whilst people who were there for a night out, shrieked in each others ears to be heard. They were fortunate the beer was expensive.

We went to Manchester rather than getting the train into London, as this was home for Elbow. Guy didn't keep that to himself on the night, as much as he doesn't in his lyrics, Station Approach being a perfect example. This great city that has spawned some of the greatest music for 50 years. The ghosts of those bands haunt the streets, because as the musical centre of the universe, those days are dead. The Smiths, The Stone Roses, The Happy Mondays, The Fall, The Inspiral Carpets, Oasis, they live on in the t-shirts, the pictures, the music, the haircuts and anoraks of 40 year old men, but the heart has gone. Manchester has lost it's identity. Elbow are the last great band to come out of Manchester, but they are a product of its death more than it's past spirit. The sad, thought provoking songs and lyrics are as much a lament to a time spent than a rousing war cry.

Maybe that's because there is a new upstart. Go east out of Manchester and cross the Pennines and you find a city coming alive. Leeds. A hotbed of raw talent and a DIY ethic that is the sound of the 21st century. Most of the bands you are listening to at the moment either hail from Leeds or gravitate to it and have some connection. Wild Beasts, Alt-J, Pulled Apart by Horses, Sky Larkin are being followed and even stolen from by the likes of new darlings Menace Beach. There are iconic record shops like Jumbo and Crash Records and mail order purveyors like Norman Records, and a new home to rival the Hacienda in Brudenell Social Club where The Cribs recently announced their comeback and aforementioned Menace Beach held their album launch.

The best thing about the new Leeds scene is the absolute lack of pretention. These are bands doing it for no another reason than they want to make music and make albums, and no one encapsulates that better than the Suburban Home Studio, run by MJ from Hookworms and part time in Menace Beach. He is the hottest new producer in England and when he isn't recording Hookworms and Menace Beach the queue is round the block for his services. Not that he'd tell you that though but he's worked with names such as Eagulls, Pulled Apart by Horses, Drenge, Mazes and Joanna Gruesome.
Hookworms are a self-confessed hobby of the protagonists, who run studios and work in schools for a living. Following the release of their second record, The Hum, in November they are doing a bad job of wanting to keep it purely a folly of their spare time as it slowly overtakes the rest of their lives. It is this un-fussed, laissez faire attitude that makes it what it is. Nothing is forced, but it is slaved over to perfection.

There is an incredible new artist called Eaves who is releasing his debut album in April, What Green Feels Like. Above is an acoustic version of As Old as the Grave recorded in Berlin. A beautifully bleak but honest song.

There is no image. There isn't a concern about cool, which may fly in the face of the archetypal rock'n'roll band or rock star, but instead there is an underground ethic, that is bubbling to the surface.