Idlewild
Post Electric Blues
(Cooking Vinyl)
Fourteen years and five albums in, Scottish rockers Idlewild have still got it. Although their sound has mellowed considerably - gone are the punky roots of the earlier guise and the heavy guitar sound from 2007's Make Another World. Instead, Post Electric Blues is everything the title suggests: riff-driven, bluesy yet poppy, and ultimately melodic and soaring rock.
Readers & Writers is perhaps the band's most confident and catchy work in half a decade - hook- laden fret-work with a pounding drum beat.
Elsewhere, Younger Than America and Dreams of Nothing sounds like a mix of Manic Street Preachers and Pearl Jam. Lead singer Roddy Woomble's Scottish drawl works best on the folky ballads (The Night Will) Bring You Back to Life and To Be Forgotten.
While it's unlikely that Post Electric Blues will net the rockers many new fans, long-time fans won't be disappointed.