Idlewild

Idlewild
Post-Electric Blues
"We've never really fitted in..." - Roddy Woomble
"A round man cannot be expected to fit in a square hole right away. He must have
time to modify his shape." - Mark Twain
When the coke-shrivelled testicles of Brit-pop were still in full-swing, Idlewild were
dropping out of art school and ingesting Fugazi, Superchunk "...and all those small
bands on American indie-rock labels." A few gigs, a few seven inch singles and then
in 1998 they released their 'Captain' mini album via Steve to Lamacq's Deceptive
label (at the time home to Elastica) before signing to Food Records (then home to
Blur). Then, when every new British band from Coldplay to Badly Drawn Boy trotted
around with an acoustic guitar, they delivered their debut full-length of erratic punk
rock, 'Hope Is Important'.
Yet, just when it seemed like their time to crossover, the yanks with their bloated
Nu Metal and skinny-jeaned New York cool hijacked the agenda and Idlewild were
lost at sea making melodic rock with Scottish accents. Then, when rock-withregional
accents (Arctic Monkeys, Lily, Nash, et al.) was all the rage, their frontman
moved to New York and took time out to make traditional folk albums ('My
Secret Is My Silence', 'Ballad of the Books' and 'Before the Ruin') - which maybe is
but probably isn't quite as Great Jones Street as it sounds.
In the fourteen years since their inception, Idlewild may never have been the
fashionable flash in the pan people wanted them to be but then, who wants to 'fit
in' anyway? Unlike most modern bands they've been able to develop into the tamed
beast that purrs like James Dean's Harley. They have toured and toured, found
fans, picked up gold and silver sales discs, scored top 10 singles, released a Best Of
and a B-Sides collection, not to mention finding themselves atop various year-end
lists either of side of Atlantic, across Europe, in Japan and pretty much everywhere
else in the known universe (approx). Meanwhile, front man, Roddy Woomble,
moved from New York to the Isle of Mull where he sits beside a coal scuttle writing
a regular column for a hill-walking & backpacking magazine. It might not sound like
a perfect storm but put it altogether and you have a great British rock band, in a
very interesting place at a very perculiar time.
Now, whilst digital divas and earnest bearded American men in plaid shirts are
running amok, Idlewild are releasing 'Post-Electric Blues' an indie-rock album of
Boss-like bombast, flecked with 70s synths and dashes of brass. It's an album that
leaps from Fleetwood Mac epic folk/rock/pop peaks into joyous Loch-side sing-alongs.
It's the sound of a deft and defiant band (completed by Rod Jones on guitar,
backing vocals, keyboards; Colin Newton on drums, percussion; Allan Stewart on
guitar and Gareth Russell on bass), exploring soundscapes whilst finding hooks and
generally, genuinely and quite clearly, having a fookin good time.
"Album opener 'Younger than America' was the first track we wrote for the album,"
says Roddy. "The lyrics came from a Western I was watching and I really liked the
idea of a frontier. It is the way it is because we're all big fans of Neil Young 'Crazy
Horse'. When we wrote it we thought it might turn into a bit of a classic rock album.
It didn't turn out that way really, especially because for 'Readers and Writers' we
found this old box of brass instruments and Rod built up this weird orchestra in protools.
We all really liked it and the trumpets reminded me of one of my favourite
bands The Walkmen."
"I wanted to have a more off the cuff feel to the record, with the words especially,"
declares Roddy and there's a definite sense of anything goes which produces a
volatile warmth to the record. It's a balmy heat that comes from a meeting of punk
rock at a crossroads with folk. Don't get me wrong, this isn't some kinda mashed-up
black-eyed beans and bratwurst genre-dump, it's just a rock record with a heart of
strings, xylophones, hand-claps, trumpets, hammond organs and big nihilistic grins.
Rock, be it punk rock, folk-rock, stadium rock or indie-rock, certainly had an
influence: "Rod is obsessed with... I mean, he really loves Bruce Springsteen! We
all love bands like Wilco and Pearl Jam - we loved touring with them, they're a
great rock band. Some people think people think Pearl Jam are the uncoolest band
in world, some people absolutely live by them, and they just do what they do, lots
of bands say they do that but they're affected by things." Remind you of anyone?
(A: See above)
Lyrically, the punk-rock sloganeering of their earlier work has become a mixture of
poignant observational small-world imagery and universal ponder-neering. No
particular books, authors or philosophers influenced this album "although I have
been reading this great book about Babylon" offers Roddy. 'Readers & Writers'
however is inspired by the Judee Sill classic 'Jesus Was a Cross Maker' which Roddy
was singing as a guide vocal. Roddy admits that "perhaps, the most literal lyrics
I've ever written" feature on 'Take Me Back to the Islands' (with added vocals from
Heidi Talbot and John McCusker), a song from a simpler time, that hints at why
Roddy's moved to Mull with his wife and newborn.
This isn't all textural wilderness-gazing or woe is me Morrissey-like rambling. There
are a few wry lyrics because "sometimes you need some daft lines in there,"
explains Roddy, "I don't that think it's possible to have a rock song where every line
is perfect, I don't think that's the point of rock music."
He continues: "The album title came from a silly conversation I was having walking
up a hill about everything being post-something, like how everything is now post
post-modern. It's not an entirely serious title and the whole album has a playfulness
to it which I think it sums up quite well". So it's not a reference to Dylan plugging
in a electric guitar at Newport Folk Festival then? "No, I didn't think about that,
everyone says I listen to too much Dylan and old Jazz. I guess it has a sort of Dylan
quality to it but it's moreso because Post-Digital Blues didn't feel right."
Shortly after the release of 2007's 'Make Another World', the Sanctuary Group went
into administration and Idlewild became an unsigned band. Instead of chasing a
deal, the band took a leap of faith and asked their fans to pre-order the album. "We
got the budget for the record down to a bare minimum" explains Roddy. "We knew
we could make a record if only a few hundred people pre-ordered it. We had no idea
how it'd go, originally we thought it'd be a 1000 people. Our last record 'Make
Another World' sold about 40,000 copies, even though the record label [Sanctuary]
closed down just after it was released." The result of the experiment was a triumph,
with over 3000 of their web-savvy tribe embracing the 2.0 record funding model.
Whilst they waited for the record to be written and recorded, members of their
fanclub-like online community saw and heard work-in-progress snippets of 'Post-
Electric Blues': "The fans of the band were part of this album and were entitled to
see the songs being written and to feel a part of them," beams Roddy. "They paid
for them to be recorded after all. In today's musical world when everything has to
be available and instant and people get bored quickly (far too quickly in my opinion)
this album was our attempt to get with the times. I suppose the album title reflects
this. We all really like and appreciate the fact the fans paid for us to make this
album and that all their names are inside of it."
Written and recorded in a small practice room in Fife, 'Post-Electric Blues' might not
be a quintessentially Scottish album but at times a few of the distortion pedals
sound like they're set to 'bagpipe'. Yet, clearly, this was an album made to play
live, as Roddy explains: "Most bands now make their living through concerts, and
we're no exception, so records have to be tailored that way. With 'The Remote Part
and 'Warnings...' we were writing songs that would sound good on the radio (and
live, but the radio was more important - so we were told). There are a million new
bands on the radio waves, or digital waves, now so it's more important to us how
we will sound good through a PA system in a club and that we can play and sing it
all!" Although, he concedes: "That said, it'd be lovely to have a hit."
Bringing things full circle, Roddy concludes: "I guess we've never really fitted into
anything. When we got our punk rock guitars out everyone was talking about
acoustic guitars and vice-versa. The nearly men, the underdogs, never as big as
they should have been, these things come up all the time but..." he takes a pause
to sip some tea "...I don't really know what the rush is. I really love bands with
long careers. I feel like we've only just started and I'm hoping we've got another 30
or 40 years left in us."
By Sean Adams