Not for Idlewild the potentially headline-grabbing break-up then make-up. Instead, the Edinburgh-formed band simply disappeared long enough to allow people to realise how much they were taking them for granted. Everything Ever Written – their first album since 2009 and a three-year hiatus – is a well-judged reminder of their ingrained class, and successfully reignites a back catalogue so rich in great choruses even some of its choruses have choruses.
This show is the second of two at Glasgow’s O2 ABC, Idlewild’s first major home turf concerts since 2010. Once purveyors of jagged post-grunge so wiry you could see its bones through its skin, they return mellower and brawnier, wearing obvious tropes of maturation. A fiddler – Hannah Fisher, who follows frontman Roddy Woomble from his folk solo career – now carries the lead line of You Held the World in Your Arms, while another new member Lucci Rossi adds warm swirls of organ to Little Discourage.
Among the new songs, Come on Ghost feels the most authentically Idlewild-ian in its generosity of melody and harmony, knotty-wordy lyrics and arse-kick of a fuzzed-out riff from guitarist Rod Jones, and yet it goes to unfamiliar places, too, in its slackly rocking outro, featuring a skronking sax solo. Where early-years firecrackers A Film for the Future and Captain would, circa 1998, have invariably ended with Woomble thrashing about on the floor screaming, these days the Isle of Mull-dwelling, hillwalking enthusiast doesn’t even try the high yelps. During instrumental passages – the harmonising guitar duel at the end of (Use It) If You Can Use It, for instance – he calmly wanders off to the wings to let his band take centre stage.
Idlewild’s influence is undeniable, yet easily overlooked – would Frightened Rabbit or Biffy Clyro sound as they do had Love Steals Us From Loneliness, American English or A Modern Way of Letting Go never been sung? As this set resolves with a rousing In Remote Part/Scottish Fiction, their legacy feels like it can only grow.
• At The Institute, Birmingham (0844 844 0444), 10 March; The Ritz, Manchester (0844 248 5117), 12 March; The Roundhouse, London (0300 6789 222), 13 March; and The Limelight 2, Belfast (028 9032 7007), 20 March. Tour details: idlewild.co.uk
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