12:12 Tune of the Day: Readers And Writers — Idlewild
Posted By Ben W. on October 14, 2009
The career road map for Scot rockers Idlewild is reminiscent of the rivers in Albania.
Damn near impossible to navigate.
Today’s 12:12 Tuner represents the latest version of the Idlewild sound — big, busy, full of horns and bells. And it’s great, isn’t it? I’m so excited to see them still reinventing and progressing, even though it appears their relevance arc peaked in 2005 and since has been steeply declining.
I’m not sure this song — or their new Post Electric Blues album — makes them particularly relevant on the charts. It’s self-released, after all. But it’s a great song and a beautifully crooked finger in the eye of the current UK music scene and expectations for what Idlewild is supposed to be doing 14 years into their existence.
And I wasn’t kidding about that Albanian river of a career map for these guys. My best effort at navigating it goes like this — they rose to prominence as indie darlings in the late 90s, released one of the decade’s best albums in 100 Broken Windows, cashed in with a little mainstream polish, turned onto folk music, had their band name get more famous as a film and album by OutKast, got completely and utterly forgotten about by the British public, compounded the problem by releasing the worst album of their career (2007’s Make Another World) at exactly the moment when they needed to come up with something big, put out a largely ignored Greatest Hits compilation, grew long beards and even longer hair, probably should have broken up but instead added the Wall Of Sound to their arsenal and gave us some more exciting new music!
A less wordy version goes like this:
The guys proudly carry the grunge flag into 1998.
The guys get catchy and emo.
The guys get into R.E.M. and Roddy shows off his newfound Stipe voice.
The guys decide to make some money and get on the radio.
Roddy reinvents himself as your neighborhood scraggly folk poet mountain man.
The guys lose the plot. Badly.
Now go play today’s 12:12 Tuner again as the happy ending! Idlewild is back! All celebrate!
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I’ve heard much about these Albanian rivers! DON’T BE TALKING SH** ABOUT ALBANIA, SON.