Scottish alt-rock stalwarts Idlewild made a quietly confident return earlier this month, announcing a new self-titled album — their first since 2019 — set to land October 3rd via V2 Records. The opening shot, ‘Stay Out Of Place’, premiered by Steve Lamacq on BBC 6 Music, wastes no time reminding us why they matter. Press support’s been rolling in from all corners, and long-time fans? Back on board like they never left.
The band are wasting no time keeping the momentum going, following up their recent comeback with a second single, the stirring ‘It’s Not The First Time’ — a widescreen, melodic cut that picks up right where ‘Stay Out Of Place’ left off.
Commenting on the themes behind the new track, frontman Roddy Woomble says:
“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.”
Produced by guitarist Rod Jones — who also handled mixing duties — alongside the rest of the band, Idlewild marks the group’s tenth studio album. Written throughout 2024 between Post Electric Studios in Edinburgh and the Isle of Iona Library in the Hebrides, it captures a band both in reflection and reinvention.
Idlewild have worn a few different skins since forming in Edinburgh back in 1995. They kicked off as scrappy teenage punks, firing out buzzsaw riffs and barbed lyrics on Hope Is Important and 100 Broken Windows, before levelling up to become one of the UK’s most vital rock acts with The Remote Part — a record that stormed to number three in the UK charts, rubbing shoulders with Oasis and Red Hot Chili Peppers in 2002.
Either side of their 2010 hiatus — a necessary breather that opened the door to solo ventures and production work — they’ve stretched out into widescreen indie, introspective folk, and, on 2019’s Interview Music, a swirl of inventive art-pop. With the new LP, they fold all of that history back in — ten tracks that feel like a conversation between past and present, full of the same wide-eyed energy that once had them obsessing over Fugazi and R.E.M., now filtered through the kind of road-tested chemistry you only get by sticking around.
As Roddy Woomble puts it, they were chasing “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 explains. “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 drops October 3rd and will be released on CD, standard black vinyl, plus two limited-edition coloured vinyl variants. Pre-orders are open here now, offering everything from ready-made bundles to fully customisable, self-curated packages tailored by you.
Fans can catch Idlewild live at the following dates:
JULY
27 – Deer Shed Festival, Thirsk
SEPTEMBER
13 – Black Isle Calling, Inverness
OCTOBER
10 – Boilershop, Newcastle
11 – Project House, Leeds
12 – Wulfrun Hall, Wolverhampton
14 – The Junction, Cambridge
15 – O2 Academy, Bristol
17 – KOKO, London (SOLD OUT)
18 – New Century Hall, Manchester (SOLD OUT)
DECEMBER
5 – Beach Ballroom, Aberdeen (SOLD OUT)
6 – LiveHouse, Dundee
7 – Barrowland, Glasgow (SOLD OUT)
JANUARY (2026)
2–5 – Rockaway Beach, Bognor Regis
Featured image courtesy of Euan Robertson.
