Born in Edinburgh in 1995, when British indie was caught between post-grunge and a dying britpop, Idlewild emerged with a raw urgency, closer to Fugazi than to Blur. Over time, they learned to temper that fury, opening up to melody and chasing their own emotional geography — the one that, in the early 2000s, led them to release 100 Broken Windows and The Remote Part.
Their tenth album after a long silence, Idlewild moves with the confidence of those who no longer need to prove anything. Stay Out of Place opens with controlled tension — dense guitars and a driving rhythm — while Roddy Woomble’s voice drifts between nostalgia and determination. Make It Happen brings back the grit of their early years; Writers of the Present Time feels like a letter to their twenty-year-old selves, full of gentle regrets and sudden sparks of pride. After thirty years, Idlewild have returned to tie together the threads of their own story.
And yet, behind the poise and fine sound, one can’t help but wonder if Idlewild have already said everything they had to say. The writing is solid, the references sharp, but the sense of risk that once made them essential is gone. Idlewild plays like the diary of a band that understands itself completely — perhaps too completely to still surprise. It’s an honest, well-made return — but not a necessary one. Sometimes maturity is just another way of saying you’ve stopped fighting.