Back with a new album, the Scottish five-piece stopped off in Nottingham for the last date of their UK tour.
There was a venue change, originally planned to play in Rock City but the venue changed to Rescue Rooms, and by the time we turned up, the place was absolutely packed. This year marks twenty years as a band and in February this year they released their seventh album ‘Everything Ever Written’. So it’s no surprise, Idlewild are a band with a cult following with an audience made up of young and old.
It was my sister that got me into Idlewild, I particularly remember listening to their album ‘A Remote Part’ when I was younger. But it wasn’t until last summer that I saw these guys play for the first time at Beautiful Days festival in Devon, and while they were enjoyable then, I felt the indoors setting of Rescue Rooms was much more suited to them and their sound.
Most of the rest of the tour they had played a set with half acoustic and half electric but here at rescue rooms they decided to go for a complete electric set. I definitely wasn’t complaining, as I’m a much bigger fan of their heavier electric songs.
They kicked off the set with a mixture of old and newer songs with ‘The World in your arms’ and ‘Modern way of letting go’ both played quite early on. It was songs like these that got people dancing and started a mosh pit in the front. They mixed up their slightly punkier songs and melodic rock songs well and played a lot of tracks from ‘100 Broken Windows’, including ‘Little Discourage’ and ‘Roseability’ which also really got the crowd going.
Lead singer Roddy thanked people for coming out on a Sunday evening, he’s very humble and seems down to earth, and when there are instrumental parts where he’s not singing he often stands to the side of the stage as if it to say to the rest of the band ‘you guys go for it’. Guitarist Rod Jones movement on stage is great to see, it’s clear to see how much he enjoys playing and the keyboards and violin on some of their songs adds a great element, noticeable on new song ‘Utopia’, which I was really impressed with.
Roddy joked with the crowd saying ‘This is our last song, but we sometimes do encores’. They then went off stage and within twenty seconds they were back on to play a few more songs, which included ‘American English’, which the band rearranged to just have the guitar playing so all you could hear were the crowd singing the words ‘Sing a song about myself, keep singing a song about myself’ and they then ended the set with ‘Remote Part’ which proved to be a great set closer.
It might be easy for people to lose interest in a band that had mainstream success fifteen years ago, but from what I saw tonight, it didn’t feel like a new album tour, but more like a greatest hits set, making me realise just how many songs of there’s I knew and recognised and just how good their songs are. They are likely to be back touring in 2017 and I’ll definitely be going.
Sam Bigwood
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