Island records

It makes a change for a musician to be giving tours rather than going on them - but it's become a way of life for Idlewild's Roddy Woomble. The long-time Iona resident spoke to the Quietus' Stevie Chick about how he's taken to showing visitors around the island during his downtime from band duties.

Those duties have ratcheted up again recently with the release of a tenth album, this one self-titled. It's curious to think that a band as ragged and chaotic as they once were have lasted so long (with the odd hiatus along the way).

Woomble claimed that "the new record's very much what Idlewild fans have probably wanted for quite a while, referencing ourselves a wee bit: 100 Broken Windows and The Remote Part." While it's a solid enough album, that rather oversells it - it's more like a middle-aged man's idea of what those records are like than a realistic representation. As Oliver Moore-Howells put it in a lukewarm review for Buzz, they're neither idle nor wild these days.

That many fans pine for the 100 Broken Windows/The Remote Part era is entirely understandable - it's when Idlewild were at their most fascinating. They may not quite have ever struck the improbable balance between Black Flag and REM that Woomble had envisaged when they set out, but Hope Is Important and even the Captain EP had given more than a few snatches of a melodicism erupting through, and the fact that production duties on 100 Broken Windows were shared by Shellac's Bob Weston and Manics polisher Dave Eringa speaks volumes about where they were at.

That Black Flag/REM hybrid is mentioned in Steve Miller's Toppermost article on the band - as ever, a concise and helpful primer for anyone not already in the know. Miller rightly notes that with The Remote Part, "as the sharp edges were further smoothed, it's arguable that the band was at risk of losing some of its identity", and alludes to "a push and pull between a band that was trying to reach across the Atlantic, and one that wanted to remember its roots".

That tension was a source of creative energy but also of unbearable internal friction and strain. The Remote Part was the tipping point; something had to give. Once bassist Bob Fairfoull left under a cloud in 2002, having lost the civil war for Idlewild's future, and Woomble promised "As of next year we're going to be a different band really", what had made them so engaging was sadly lost. They've carried on, making a series of sedate, reflective records that have their own merits, but I for one miss the days when tunefulness was forced to fight its corner.