Garbage Days Revisited #18: Idlewild - "Hope Is Important" (1998)

 

"I'm not that medieval, sometimes I write my thoughts down..." - Idlewild - Everyone Says You're So Fragile

We're taking a quick one week interlude from the New York glam-punk scene at the moment because I figured that seeing as I'd already written about Midget this weekend, I should probably make the second part of our weekly look-back double header about the band I saw supporting Peterborough's finest one hot and sweaty night in Leeds (as detailed in Friday's entry). Unlike Midget, Idlewild would go on to some quite significant success. However, similar to Midget, the album they were promoting at that gig very much turned out to be their high point. Even if it seems the band don't think so for some weird reason.

As I mentioned in the Midget SFTJ entry a couple of days ago, I first saw Idlewild sharing a bill with the Stamford pop-punks in Leeds in the summer of '98. It seems weird to think given how much they toned their sound down in later years but back then they really were something to behold, throwing themselves around the stage like human stock cars while frontman Roddy screamed out the lyrics. It was amazing and a few days later I went out to get their new single Everyone Says You're So Fragile (which had just been given Single of the Week by Steven Wells, a journo whose word I pretty solidly trusted, in the NME). It sounded like an utterly rabid version of the Senseless Things circa First of Too Many with its breakneck riff, vocals which alternated between a snarl and a scream and the sense of pure chaos. Brilliant stuff.

The group would keep up their run of form with I'm A Message which kept the chaotic energy of old but added just enough structure to it to make it danceable at rock clubs. Frustratingly it would become their third single in a row (after Everyone... and its predecessor A Film For The Future) to stall just outside the Top 40 but it set up their first full album (the group had already put the ultra-chaotic Captain mini-album out on Deceptive which was a bit light on tunes but showed off the band's energy well, similar to early Therapy?) Hope Is Important which surfaced towards the end of '98.

I was amazed on reading an interview with Roddy Woomble a few years ago that he regards Hope Is Important as the weakest Idlewild album. With the greatest of respect, I thoroughly disagree - I would say it's their crowning glory, mixing the sheer ferocity of Captain with the growing melodic sensibilities that would come afterwards (but without letting those detract from the energy as subsequent albums would do) to brilliant effect. From the feral opening roar of You've Lost Your Way, this one ratchets up the tempo, bites on to your arm like a steel-jawed guard dog and refuses to let go throughout. Paint Nothing and 4 People Do Good packed a similar punch to the singles while the gentle acoustic-led I'm Happy To Be Here Tonight, the menacing Safe And Sound and the ominous closer Lowlight showed a more nuanced side to their sound. Oddest of all was Close The Door which sounded like an even spikier version of the Wonder Stuff's Unbearable.

It should have been the start of a meteoric career for Idlewild and commercially it was but unfortunately in terms of quality, it was pretty much all downhill from this point. The group mysteriously picked the weakest song off Hope Is Important, When I Argue I See Shapes (a decent song but at four and a bit minutes it seemed to drag a bit) as the next single which gave them their first proper hit. I saw the group for the second time at the 1999 Leeds Festival sandwiched between headliners 3 Colours Red playing their final gig before their (as it turned out temporary) split and Symposium who would soon have gone their separate ways as well and they gave a decent account of themselves but a little bit of the chaoticness of old that initially drew me to them seemed to be missing.

That night would also see Idlewild premier a new song, Little Discourage which surfaced a month or so later. It boded well for their second album, sounding like a more reined in and focused version of Shapes and gave them a second Top 30 hit. However, when the second album 100 Broken Windows surfaced in early 2000, it felt like a bit of a disappointment with the group sounding a bit more mellow albeit with most of the energy of yore still intact. Although second single Actually It's Darkness was a poor effort, sounding like a rubbish version of I'm A Message, the next two These Wooden Ideas and Roseability were decent efforts if you could ignore that they essentially sounded like the same song with slightly different words.

By the time their third album, 2002's The Remote Part, surfaced though, it really did feel like Idlewild had lost the plot. You Held The World In Your Arms sounded like all of the singles from 100 Broken Windows put together but not nearly as good while American English was a dreary ballad (a ballad ferfuxxake!) which almost defined the word "torpid". I wandered off muttering darkly under my breath.

Idlewild are still out there today and currently celebrating 25 years as a band. Fair play to them and I'm sure they've no complaints about how their career's turned out with several albums which have sold well and a respectable career behind them. But I kind of miss those four scruffy Scottish lads bouncing around, thrashing their instruments and screaming like a bunch of hellcats on that Leeds stage all those years ago. It's age I s'pose - we all grow up and lose our energy a bit, whether we want to or not. But I think Roddy's being way too harsh in writing Hope Is Important off - to me, this album captures everything that drew me to Idlewild in the first place but which they slowly but surely lost in the following years unfortunately. Cue it up, have a good bounce around your room and remember 'em this way.