Back by popular demand
Idlewild’s comeback album is a glorious combination of soulful Scotpop and freewheeling experimental rock
Frustrating as it was for their fans, who actively petitioned the band to reform, Idlewild’s extended break at the start of this decade has reaped hugely refreshing benefits. Returning to action with two new members, Andrew Mitchell and Luciano Rossi, and a noticeably expanded musical palette, they sounded like a band reborn on 2014 comeback album Everything Ever Written.
That creative evolution continues with Interview Music, an album rooted in the familiar Idlewild territory of beguiling tunes, innate energy and Celtic soul but which confidently chooses the scenic route on many an extended sonic excursion, from the suitably trippy opener Dream Variations to the technicolour roots rocker Miracles.
The title track imbues blue-eyed soulful Scotpop with a prog rock twist, jazz piano and distorted guitar. The psychedelic, gospel-flavoured
Mount Analogue is dispatched with a poised playfulness suggestive of an unfettered atmosphere in the studio. Even the relative punky familiarity of current single Same Things Twice is embellished with heroic guitar wrangling.
But none of these exploratory embellishments suck the momentum from the music; rather, Idlewild are now the model of a freewheeling experimental rock band.
You’re The Man, released to mark what would have been Marvin Gaye’s 80th birthday, is being touted as the intended follow-up to his classic
What’s Going On, and comprises a season’s worth of recordings shelved at the time following the poor commercial reception of its title track, an explicitly political reaction to the 1972 US presidential campaign.
Almost 50 years on, its haunted anger is still a fit for the times, with Gaye musing on the legacy left for future generations on Where Are We
Going. But the unfairly overlooked material gathered here also provides a bridge between his political conscience and the personal smooch of Let’s Get It On, courtesy of the soothing silky ballad My Last Chance, the devotional Symphony and the equally rhapsodic I’d Give My Life For
You, with its featherlight orchestral soul backing. Elsewhere among its bumper 17 tracks, it is worth storing up acid soul instrumental Christmas
in the City and the Vietnam soldier’s
lament I Want to Come Home for Christmas for your festive mixtape. Fast forward into the 21st century and Lee Fields is here to deliver the same evergreen and ever-needed message. With the recent passing of his peers Sharon Jones and Charles Bradley, this old school soul man is one of the last of his kind, and his belief in the healing power of music runs right through the soulful salve of
It Rains Love.
Fields’ gospel message of love is shot through with rhythm’n’blues grit on the title track’s ode to fidelity, the aching humility of You’re What’s Needed In My Life and straight-up
testifying of God Is Real. But his band, The Expressions, are just as eloquent on the virtually instrumental
Love is the Answer, while the light rare groove touch of Two Faces is beautifully wrought even before the mournful brass coda.
Roseanne Reid also has soul to spare, and her soft vocal delivery and southern soul sway on I Love
Her So might suggest she hails from Memphis rather than much closer to home. Reid cut her teeth in Leith Folk Club and her father is Proclaimer Craig Reid, who appears to have passed on his love of country music as well as his songwriting talent to his eldest daughter. No less an artist than Steve Earle has recognised her undeniable potential, providing guest vocals on Sweet Annie, while producer Teddy Thompson, himself the offspring of successful musicians, arguably places her subtle, honeyed voice too low in the mix – or maybe it’s a shrewd ploy to reel the listener in even further.
No less an artist than Steve Earle has recognised Roseanne Reid’s potential, providing guest vocals on Sweet Annie