IDLEWILD SHARE NEW SINGLE ‘IT’S NOT THE FIRST TIME’
LISTEN HERE
NEW ALBUM ‘IDLEWILD’ OUT OCTOBER 3RD ON V2 RECORDS
Photo Credit: Euan Robertson
Selected praise for last single “Stay Out Of Place”:
“Idlewild have been making churning, majestic alt-rock anthems for decades… “Stay Out Of Place” is a big, hearty anthem about life’s temporary nature.” – Stereogum
“New single ‘Stay Out Of Place’ sits alongside some of the band’s best work – the alt crunch remains, alongside a near Celtic tinge of folk-hewn yearning. Prime Idlewild, in other words…”
CLASH
“The first single is its opening track, “Stay Out of Place,” which has Idlewild’s signature anthemic style all over it.”
Brooklyn Vegan
“Soul-stirring new single… ‘Stay Out Of Place’ is an anthemic number.”
NME
The Scottish alternative rock band Idlewild returned earlier this month with the welcome news of a self-titled album, their first since 2019, to land October 3rd via V2 Records. Its immediate first single ‘Stay Out Of Place’, premiered by Steve Lamacq on his BBC 6 Music show, saw enthusiastic press support internationally and reborn love from their fanbase.
Today the band follow-up that release swiftly with a second single, the emotive “It’s Not The First Time”, a widescreen, melodic song that continues in that same rich vein of form.
Frontman Roddy Woomble had the following to say about the themes behind the album’s second single, one that feels like it wouldn’t feel out of place on “The Remote Part”:
“Memory is a broken net, a leaky barrel. You exist in a series of nows, and there is an art to the obvious – all great truths are obvious truths.
Having been a touring band for thirty years we’ve had our fair share of ups and downs. So for every wet and cold Tuesday night in Chemnitz in Germany supporting a band and playing to a half empty room of disinterested people talking, or maybe a Thursday in Lawrence, Kansas when six people have paid in on the door and you’ve been on tour for two months already – there’s a sold out night at the Glasgow Barrowlands, playing to two thousand people who know all the words, or getting the opportunity to play packed headline gigs in Tokyo or New York. To travel and meet great people. The point is amidst all this you have to appreciate the moment for whatever it is showing you. And that’s the idea the song is trying to get across.”
Listen to “It’s Not The First Time” HERE
Listen to ‘Stay Out Of Place’ HERE
Produced by Rod Jones (who also mixed the record) and Idlewild, ‘Idlewild’ is the tenth studio album from the group and was written over 2024 at Post Electric Studios in Edinburgh and the Isle of Iona Library in the Hebrides.
Since forming in Edinburgh in 1995, Idlewild have been a lot of different things. They were a teenage punk band, slinging buzzsaw riffs and barbed refrains on their seminal early records ‘Hope Is Important’ and ‘100 Broken Windows’, before becoming one of the most compelling mainstream rock groups of their generation with ‘The Remote Part’, an album that debuted at number three on the UK charts behind Oasis and Red Hot Chili Peppers in 2002.
On either side of a 2010 hiatus, which allowed them to branch out along fresh creative avenues, from solo albums to production work for other bands, they made widescreen indie-rock, ruminative folk-rock and, with 2019’s thrillingly inventive ‘Interview Music’, sprawling art-pop. Across the ten songs of ‘Idlewild’ they welcome each of these past selves into the room, interrogating formative sounds with the vigour and curiosity of kids geeking out over Fugazi and R.E.M. while simultaneously exploring texture and harmony through the sort of road-worn chemistry that you can’t fake. As Woomble succinctly puts it, they sought out “big ideas, deep uncertainties, memorable tunes.”
“We’re looking back without being nostalgic — we were thinking about all the songs we’d made and the new songs we were making,” he observes. “For the first time we were referencing ourselves, not in a nostalgic way, in a positive, creative way, realising that we had a ‘sound’ and the songs we were writing should celebrate that. After it was all recorded and done, it felt fitting to simply title it ‘Idlewild’.”
‘Idlewild’ will be released on CD, standard black LP and two different limited colour vinyl editions.
Pre-order ‘Idlewild’ HERE
The band will play a clutch of festival dates across the summer, before touring in support of the new album in October.
Catch Idlewild live on the following dates:
July
27th – Deer Shed Festival, Thirsk
September
13th – Black Isle Calling, Inverness
October
10th – Boilershop, Newcastle
11th – Project House, Leeds
12th – Wulfrun Hall, Wolverhampton
14th – The Junction, Cambridge
15th – O2 Academy, Bristol
17th – Koko, London (SOLD OUT)
18th – New Century Hall, Manchester (SOLD OUT)
December
5th – Beach Ballroom, Aberdeen (SOLD OUT)
6th – LiveHouse, Dundee
7th – Barrowland, Glasgow (SOLD OUT)
January (2026)
2nd – 5th – Rockaway Beach, Bognor Regis
Album Artwork
Idlewild
Idlewild
Out October 3rd on V2 Records
Pre-Order
Stay Out Of Place
Like I Had Before
It’s Not The First Time
(I Can’t Help) Back Then You Found Me
The Mirror Still
Make It Happen
I Wish I Wrote It Down
Permanent Colours
Writers Of The Present Time
End With Sunrise
Idlewild are:
Rod Jones – guitars
Andrew Mitchell – bass
Colin Newton – drums
Luciano Rossi – keyboard
Roddy Woomble – vocals