Idlewild - Scottish Fiction: Best Of 1997-2007

A decade of Idlewild? It doesn’t seem that long. Despite a reasonably high workrate by modern standards, coupled with an enviable chart record, they seem to have lacked a career-defining moment to tie them to a given time. Perhaps this is what has allowed them to evolve from angular punk to borderline indie folk (and halfway back again) throughout their six albums - they’ve just been left to get on with it. Outside of an impressively rabid cult following, they’re probably still best known for having a singer called Roddy Woomble.

Idlewild fans being Idlewild fans, the track listing has provoked no small amount of controversy. Everyone’s had at least one of their favourites ignored, with the absences of cracking early single ‘Film For The Future’ and second album lynchpin ‘Actually It’s Darkness’ seeming to cut the deepest. Both of their parent albums are represented, however; ‘Hope Is Important’ by arguably its poppiest cut, ‘When I Argue I See Shapes’, and ‘I’m A Message’. Second album ‘100 Broken Windows’ gets three tracks, bizarrely including the by-the-numbers bluster of ‘Roseability’.

Perhaps this is an unavoidable problem with ‘best of’ albums; ‘best of’ is in the eye of the beholder. Inevitably the rough edges will be knocked off and the cracks will be papered over to provide the buyer with the least offensive package. Which brings us nicely back to Idlewild’s gradual mellowing. The album wisely opens with ‘You Held The World In Your Arms’, their only top ten single to date, showcasing the more melodic, almost mid-eighties rock sound they were championing at the time of their fourth album, ‘The Remote Part’. The reflective, piano-driven ‘El Capitan’ is the stand-out from the follow up, whilst latest single ‘No Emotion’ showcases funkier, almost Franz Ferdinand-esque guitar and drum lines, though the vocal is pure Woomble.

It’s all competent stuff, and it’s all basically listenable, but is that enough? Considering a fan base such as theirs would probably own all of these tracks already, a rarities collection may have been the better way to celebrate their first decade. Still, if you’re after an introduction to this interesting if inessential group, this is the only place to go.