Idlewild – O2 Academy, Oxford, 18/10/09

23 October 2009, 09:56 | Written by Andrew Grillo

(Live)

Idlewild return to Oxford for the first time in many a year on the back of their finest album in a similar time scale; Post Electric Blues. Disproving the theory that comfort is the enemy of creativity, the band that arrive onstage to an uncharacteristically boisterous Oxford reception are comfortable in the band they have become, playing an array of material that stretches the length of their career.

Fellow Scots Xcerts open proceedings and are in contrast to what follows a band desperately scrabbling for an identity amid predictable power chords and hollow bluster. It’s wholly unspectacular emo-tinged FM rock and the warm reception it’s afforded seems more due to the prevailing excitement ahead of tonight’s headliners.

It may be October but thanks for some thermostatical mismanagement the o2 Academy has become something of a sweatbox and it’s with anticipation, but also relief, that Idlewild take to the stage. After a couple of ballads it’s onto exuberant recent single ‘Readers and Writers’ and then into ‘Actually It’s Darkness’ which sparks the inevitable singalong

Roddy Woomble is rake thin and thick bearded, and engages in well honed banter thoughout the set and while he’s at ease between songs or delivering his trademark tongue-twisting tirades he frequently lopes into the shadows during instrumental breaks to observe proceedings with a School-masterly air while the rest of the band seize the opportunity to rock out.

The real strength of tonight’s set is that the band no longer feel the need to limit themselves to celtic folk or cacophonous punk and find space in the set for offerings from each of their studio albums from the nihlistic simplicity of ‘Annihilate Now’ to the R.E.M-esque jangle of ’Younger Than America’. Woomble is in fine voice, and is ably backed by the harmonies of Rod Jones. Jones is a whirling ball of energy, flailing and slicing his guitar through the air on ‘These Wooden Ideas’ and and a ferocious and rapturously met ‘Roseability’ that sees many running for the mosh pit, even on a Sunday night.

And the hits just keep on coming; ‘You Held The World…’ brings drums like explosives and still sounds as majestic as it did on first listen and ‘When I Argue I See Shapes’ conjures memories to tracks taped from Steve Lamacq and if ‘Idea Track’ is slightly sloppy it is a perfect reminder of the dedication this band have inspired since their very first releases as it’s dedicated to some girls in the crowd you’d requested it after travelling down from Scotland for this evening.

The band are willed back onstage to deafening cries from the audience and rip into ‘A Modern Way Of Letting Go’; a highlight that sees them at their furious best musically while Woomble winds one of his obtuse lyrics to great effect and despite cries for long lost rarities with only time for one song they opt for a timeless ‘American English’ to soften the blow the end of the weekend brings.