The Celtic contingent has always had a thing for ‘the big music’. Not for them the parochial tales of wipe-swapping suburbanites and “Making Plans For Nigel”. Over Hadrian’s Wall, they beat their chests to a different drum.
Framed by electric starlight, Roddy Woomble ambles onto stage and sweeps back rock’s greatest mullet since Joe Elliott and launches us into “Love Steals Us From Loneliness”. In keeping with their punky origins, there’s no big ‘hello cleveland’ moment; instead Woomble just claims to be happy to be alive. It’s a distinctly understated stance for a band playing to a packed house and with an album that crash-landed the top 10.
Ten years into their career, Idlewild seem to be on the precipice of greatness. Like those other epic slow-burners, REM, success has hardly been of the overnight variety. And if Chris Martin & co seem intent on snatching U2’s crown, Woomble certainly has a sweet tooth for Michael Stipe’s plaintive poetry.
Perhaps as a move to soak up even further the boho literary influences, Roddy moved to New York’s east village before work began on the band’s new album where he seems to have mastered the fine art of dictionary swallowing. Never the sweetest of warblers, he talk-sings, treading that oh so fine line between the precious and the preposterous above Rod Jones’ swirling riffs. With that beautiful Scottish burr though, he just about gets away with it.
Considering the band’s schizophrenic musical metamorphosis, the band does a surprisingly good job of pleasing the hardcore and the lighter lifters, which gives the pogo boys a breather and the girls a good chance to swoon. It seems few hearts are left unmelted by “American English”, a classic cut that would sit comfortably in “The Joshua Tree”. So is this where Idlewild are heading? Are they finally ready to fill the shoes of stadium rockers?
Whilst they’ll no doubt someday make Red Rocks, armed as they now are with twin guitar heroes, they still favour the odd blast of white noise. In “The Space Between All Things”, Jones and new boy Allan Stewart play a fine game of my guitar solo’s bigger than yours. Boys will be boys after all.
