(PPR) The Scottish alternative rock band Idlewild return today with the news of a self-titled album, their first since 2019, to land October 3rd via V2 Records. 'Idlewild' will be released on CD, standard black LP and two different limited colour vinyl editions
The band also share a first single from the record, the expansive 'Stay Out Of Place', a song that has all the innate warmth and melodic immediacy that has made them such a beloved act across the years.
Premiered by Steve Lamacq on his BBC 6 Music show, frontman Roddy Woomble had the following to say about the themes behind it: "Walt Whitman was right, we do contain 'multitudes' - there is more than one "us" in there - we're choosing a voice from among the many voices. This is especially interesting in a band context, because it's not just one voice, but five voices collaborating, over time. We arrange the world in our own order, but sometimes you've got to shake up expectations and forget about the instructions - I suppose that's what I'm getting at with 'Stay Out Of Place'. It felt like a good starting point and (re)introduction to Idlewild 2025..."
Produced by Rod Jones (who also mixed the record) and Idlewild, 'Idlewild' is the tenth studio album from the group and was written over 2024 at Post Electric Studios in Edinburgh and the Isle of Iona Library in the Hebrides.
Since forming in Edinburgh in 1995, Idlewild have been a lot of different things. They were a teenage punk band, slinging buzzsaw riffs and barbed refrains on their seminal early records 'Hope Is Important' and '100 Broken Windows', before becoming one of the most compelling mainstream rock groups of their generation with 'The Remote Part', an album that debuted at number three on the UK charts behind Oasis and Red Hot Chili Peppers in 2002.
On either side of a 2010 hiatus, which allowed them to branch out along fresh creative avenues, from solo albums to production work for other bands, they made widescreen indie-rock, ruminative folk-rock and, with 2019's thrillingly inventive 'Interview Music', sprawling art-pop. Across the ten songs of 'Idlewild' they welcome each of these past selves into the room, interrogating formative sounds with the vigour and curiosity of kids geeking out over Fugazi and R.E.M. while simultaneously exploring texture and harmony through the sort of road-worn chemistry that you can't fake. As Woomble succinctly puts it, they sought out "big ideas, deep uncertainties, memorable tunes."
"We're looking back without being nostalgic - we were thinking about all the songs we'd made and the new songs we were making," he observes. "For the first time we were referencing ourselves, not in a nostalgic way, in a positive, creative way, realising that we had a 'sound' and the songs we were writing should celebrate that. After it was all recorded and done, it felt fitting to simply title it 'Idlewild'."
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