Idlewild
Warnings/Promises (Capitol)
by Marc Hirsh

originally published in Amplifier, September-October 2005

Warnings/Promises is Idlewild’s first album as a quintet, and the band takes advantage of the newfound flexibility provided by new guitarist Allan Stewart (promoted to full-time from their touring lineup) to add some interesting twists to their anthemic guitar pop. Despite the electric skronking in “I Want A Warning” and the experimental atmospherics of “The Space Between All Things,” though, Idlewild doesn’t overdo it, preferring to tickle the eardrums with Roddy Woomble’s mellifluous voice and the songs themselves. They also don’t take themselves too seriously, as the band that once pleaded “Support your local poet” from the liner notes of The Remote Part winkingly acknowledges their own implied pretentiousness by placing profundities in the mouths of others and then gently taking them to task in “Love Steals Us From Loneliness” and “I Understand It.”

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