(13) IDLEWILD - Everything Ever Written

It’s a long time since I bought an Idlewild record.  They had moved too far away from the punk-indie of Captain and Hope is Important that they were producing around the turn of the century, and I became disinterested.  While I’ve been away, they have clearly continued to evolve, because Everything Ever Written is so drastically different to what they were doing 15 years ago that it might as well have been made by a different band.  It’s been long enough that I don’t feel I have to compare the two incarnations, and my own taste has changed in the interim too.  Everything Ever Written, judged on its own merits, is a super record.  It is, in part, a bluesy, riff-driven rock record featuring some ultra-catchy choruses.  You’ll be singing half of them in the shower within a day of getting it.  But it also features some beautifully introspective, folksy ballads.  The mix between the two is perfectly balanced; indeed, as a whole the album feels very carefully crafted.  Expect the wonderful ‘Radium Girl’ to be ruined any time now by appearing on some advert you’ll then hear way too often.

sample track: Radium Girl