Intelligence and urgency mark Idlewild's show
Idlewild/Inara George
Paradise, Boston, Massachusetts
September 6, 2005
by Marc Hirsh

originally published in The Boston Globe, September 8, 2005

Idlewild may enjoy mass popularity back home in the U.K., but its overseas success hasn’t translated into anything more than a small but devoted audience here in the States. That’s a frustrating pattern all too familiar for many of its countrymen and -women, but there are obvious advantages for American fans, who get to see the Glasgow band in much closer quarters than would be possible on its home turf.

Such a state of affairs has a few drawbacks as well – Tuesday’s domestic release of the band’s fourth album, the fine Warnings/Promises, comes five months after it hit shelves in Britain – but Idlewild’s performance at the Paradise argued that the band is worth waiting for. Kicking off with the booming drums and pealing guitar riff of “Too Long Awake,” the five-piece played a tight 90-minute set of intelligent guitar anthems imbued with an uncommon sense of urgency.

That might stem in part from Idlewild’s formative years as a brash punk band, echoes of which cropped up in “A Modern Way Of Letting Go” and “Roseability.” But much like early U2, punk was only one component of a larger picture, and guitarist Rod Jones seemed determined to utilize as much of his sonic palette as he could. Constantly switching guitars between songs, he took lead singer Roddy Woomble’s description of “The Space Between All Things” as “our foray into very mild psychedelia” to heart, utilizing every tool at his disposal (including an e-bow and a slide) to play a visceral, extended solo before returning to the song with a few aggressive chords.

Spotlights like that one were few and far between, as the band typically walked a delicate line, serving the material without lapsing into bland pensiveness and leaving the focus to Woomble’s warm and inviting vocals, akin to Michael Stipe but with slightly deeper and with rounder phrasing. “A Film For The Future,” from 1999’s Hope Is Important, closed the show, the entire band twitching and jumping with the energy of Colin Newton’s explosive drums and the insistent, discordant riff whipped up by Jones and guitarist Allan Stewart. By that time, Idlewild proved that it could generate much the same uplift as Coldplay and U2, but for now, it’s simply delivering it to a smaller audience.

The show was opened by singer-songwriter Inara George, who applied her rich but girlish voice to peripatetic chamber-pop songs with textures that continually shifted from swirly to jauntily twee.