QTheMusic.com

Twelve years is a long time in music, but then Idlewild are the masters of musical change. From the snappy punky tykes who gave us Hope Is Important and Captain, they've mellowed into American English and Warnings/Promises. Their sixth studio album, Make Another World, heads back to their earlier sounds with the vigour of a band who know just what they're about. Well, most of the time. Q spoke to guitarist Rod Jones about the new album.

You’re back with a really urgent sound that took us right back to your first releases, Captain and Hope Is Important. What prompted that?
We never have any concept of what we want, it just comes out. We’d just left the label (Parlophone/EMI, they’re now on Sequel) and had no idea what we wanted to do, just wanted to write some songs. We were ready to write rock songs after six months off (recording the folky My Secret Is My Silence with Idlewild singer Roddy Woomble) because we tend to write without thinking about what it’s going to sound like. We don’t have to be presented as a new band all the time, or feel bad about the fact we’re not. We do have something still to say. We’re proud of it now and feel like it’s a triumph so going into this record we were aware of what our strengths were as a band.

Listening through the Idlewild backcatalogue, it’s like listening to a load of different bands. What’s the uniting factor?
Well, it’s different stages of your life but it’s all the same people, a core of the same people at least. There’s a dynamic that keeps it together. The thread is that we have a sound as a band and Make Another World really does sound like an Idlewild record.

Twelve years is a long time. Did you foresee the band lasting this long?
We’ve never had any sense of careerism about the band and it always happened by accident. It’s always good if you’ve no idea if you want to do. We just wanted to play songs and it kind of spiralled into what it’s become now we realise what we’ve achieved. I never really thought about it to be honest, it’s like one of those tedious football adages about one day at a time.

So you’re proper grown-ups now?
There’s an element of that I guess, none of us are assholes, none of us particularly want to do stuff that’s rock n roll. We enjoy playing, a drink as much as the next man. Mostly we just sit and have utterly pedantic conversations about The Police. I can’t wait to see them. I never got to see them for the first time and I’ve always wanted to see Stuart play the drums…

What do you think of the music scene these days?
It is different. Things like the internet have made a big difference to being perceived and the time that you have. If you can call it fortunate to never have a hit record, we’ve been able to carry on doing what we want to do. Nowadays if you don’t have a massive first record you either disappear or you have to churn out the same record over and over again. You don’t get to develop. We’ve been able to develop.

So you’re not in favour of web development then?
I use the internet everyday like most people, it’s a necessary evil but at the same time it’s killing off a lot of good elements, like patience. There’s a fast food nature of music really so people don’t appreciate things as much because you can immediately move onto the next thing. I don’t think you’re going to see bands develop.

We’ve heard rumours about an Arab Strap-style album of rarities and B-sides called Ten More Years Of This. Is it happening?
That’s possibly the most ill-advised name for an album. It’s something Parlophone wanted but it’s something we might do later in the year. It’s a good opportunity for people who haven’t heard the band to get a good idea of where we’ve come from and if you do it well, chronologically, what they might want to delve into and might not. It’s not something that interests me particularly, but there are a lot of b-sides that people aren’t aware of. It was the end of one chapter when we finished with EMI. We’ve not started again but we have a different outlook on music and what we want. And this record is informed by all this.

What does the future hold for Idlewild?
We’re still making very good records, we still have something to say and there are still people who want to see us play and enjoy us so it’s like a new lease. The next record will probably be a lot stranger, we’ll close that chapter of Idlewild and move onto something else.

Make Another World is out now

2:13 PM | 06/03/2007