Idlewild [LP]

Idlewild's self-titled 10th album begins in medias res, with Rod Jones' guitar crunching and wailing, the sound hanging in the air until vocalist Roddy Woomble catches hold of it with the first of Stay Out of Place's fizzing, inimitable hooks. Immediately, there is the sense of a band in motion, their storied past not an anchor but a spur. Idlewild's songs offer a string of compelling answers: "Everything adds up to the present moment, doesn't it?" Woomble asks.Idlewild have been a lot of different things. They were a teenage punk band, slinging buzzsaw riffs and barbed refrains, before becoming one of the most compelling mainstream rock groups of their generation. With 2019's Interview Music, they made sprawling art-pop. On Idlewild, they welcome each of these past selves into the room.Work on a follow-up to Interview Music was initially planned to begin immediately after the band wrapped up touring, but the pandemic put things into a skid. Touring the 20th anniversary of The Remote Part in 2022 was a visceral reminder of where they'd been and a prompt for what might come next.They assembled songs that celebrated pop hooks and livewire distortion, as well as expressive interplay. Writing continued at Post Electric Studio in Edinburgh and the Isle of Iona Library, before a short, sharp burst of recording in early 2025.The result is a lean, focused document - 10 tracks that get in and out in 30 minutes and change. With Jones engineering and mixing, the production reflects a collaborative, in-house approach. "We were referencing ourselves realising that we had a 'sound'," Woomble says. Facing forward, not back, Idlewild captures beauty, nuance, and clarity from three decades of sound and feeling - spontaneous, purposeful, and unmistakably them.