Idlewild

Thought of the day: When it’s all been said what is there left to say?

A girl with blood-red long locks stands on stage strumming out brittle lo-fi surfaces from her guitar. It sounds as if I’ve been transported to a deadly quiet street. I begin to get closer to some sounds. Eventually, I fathom on one side of the road there is a girl who’s cranked up Sonic Youth and Kim Deal is muttering sweet everthings. On the other side of the road, along a winding path, in a lightly lit second floor window a boy cries along to Mogwai. Poor fucker. In front of me though, there’s a guy beside the red-haired girl, playing his guitar, occasionally looking like he’s about to topple. A girl on keyboards rolls melodies from her lips, Snow Patrol's drummer is sat at the back of the stage doing the dum-dum-dish thang and there is a bassist. There’s almost always a bassist but you never, ever really notice them in the less-loud bands. They’re called Eva; they sound enchanting; it’s about as simple as that. I liked them…

Tonight is, I think, the 14th time I’ve felt the force of these Scot lads, live. I’m not boasting, I should really be blushing at the amount of times and the distances I’ve travelled to see them. There is only one reason why: iDLEWiLD’re the best live band in the country! Have been for years and continue to be so… Every time I see them my cheeks are filled with a grin and my clothes drenched in the cider and sweat of fellow pit fiends. That doesn’t happen at every gig I go to.

There’s new stuff on the menu tonight at this “intimate” gig as a treat for the bands proper fans. And then suddenly, BLAM!!! ‘Roseability’ kicks in, bodies with smiling faces squish and chaff themselves against one another and for a moment it’s almost as if the last time I saw them wasn’t 18 months ago. The first of the new treats is ‘American Heritage’ which is a mellow affair not too dissimilar to the track that follows ‘I’m Happy to be here tonight’ - which I am, until… the speakers begin to cut in and out, fuzzing and spitting whenever things get slightly louder. Unaware of the p.a. dying. iDLEWiLD soldier on for several more songs and the crowd hear a mix of front of house and the bands monitors. The new ones, the names I didn’t catch, sound like the raw punk self-empowered rejection of thoughtlessness and wrap themselves up warmly in the tight knit melodies of the bands last album ‘100 Broken Windows’. ‘I’m a Message and ‘Idea Track get us ready for a rush of new stuff but then….

One of the roadies monkeys onto the stage and gets the band to stop. They come back on 10 minutes later. It seems like the gig isn’t going to go much further than the six or seven songs we’ve heard so far. The crowd beg for more. The monitors are turned to face the crowd and out thrashes the title track from the debut mini-album ‘Captain’. You know how it goes…. Raaarrggghhhhhkkk!!! [That *is* now a word!] What else do you want me to say? Surely not comparisons to obscure Nirvana b-sides whilst Kurt was sipping a cocktail on a concrete beach beneath spaghetti junction?

And then it was over. The p.a. probably caught on fire as bodies dripped their way out the door and back into a rainy world. Oh well, even if it wasn’t as long as it should have been, we got what we came for, more or less.