Take Idlewild's previous release, "100 Broken Windows," add one part water, mix, let it go stagnant for a few hours and the result is "The Remote Part," a more mature but slightly diluted version of the band.
The Scottish quartet used to pack a punch and leave pretty bruises. The edge hasn't been lost completely, but it has weakened to a faint signal in the background, its beeping relegated to a mere comforting murmur not unlike the chorus of heart monitors in a hospital.
But Idlewild used to be the edge, its sound mimicking the breakneck pulse of a runner at full speed. Their debut LP, "Hope Is Important," crossed Scottish punk with fervent, albeit fragile, existentialist musings. "100 Broken Windows" was a successful expansion of that style, the band's sonic and lyrical improvements filling up space formerly left open by immaturity. It was one of the most original rock albums of this prepubescent century. Invoking an unsuspecting Gertrude Stein, repeating alliterative tongue twisters -- try "shed a shade of silence" five times fast -- and changing speeds all the time as it built tension before pouncing into a 200-meter dash, then settling into a long distance jaunt until the energy built to another all-out sprint.
"The Remote Part" lets go of a good deal of freshness and raw energy in favor of accessibility, perhaps due to the work of new producer Dave Eringa. There's always a tradeoff when choosing which to go for, universality or the development a singular vision, and Idlewild has chosen to lurk somewhere in the middle. This is in some ways frustrating, since singer Roddy Woomble's singular vision is both compelling and intellectually provocative. His earlier, more bizarre lyrics made you want to hear them again because you were so close to getting it and maybe the next time you actually would. His latest lyrical forays into the "real world," although still not particularly concrete, show potential for him to go further in this direction. He doesn't excel at more traditional things like narrative, but that hasn't stopped him from trying, with some success, this time around.
The album's first two songs, "You Held the World in Your Arms" and "A Modern Way of Letting Go," show that Idlewild has by no means lost the capacity to rock hard. The sweeping strings of "You Held the World" heighten its well-composed frenzy. Rod Jones' electric guitar on "A Modern Way" veers close to metallic, with Woomble's creamy voice smoothing things out without lessening the fast pace. Opening with these hard-hitters is a good move, getting the momentum going early. Some of the mid-album songs could use a pick-me-up.
"American English" shows off Woomble's songwriting potential -- this one is somewhat conventional and makes pretty good sense. There's a "you" and an "I" and a troubling relationship between the two which remains murky and generalized but still intriguing.
Yet the chorus returns to self-focus, seeming to explain Woomble's songwriting choices on the album: "Keep singing the song about myself / Not some invisible world." His earlier word work stayed mostly in invisible, fictional realms of abstraction, grounded in linguistic sport. It's clear he can't cut the chord between himself and his realms. "Live in a Hiding Place" expresses the safety felt in self-imposed isolation, but the song turns on the phrase "that's not hidden now," hinting at Woomble's choice to open himself up more on this album. And the tongue-in-cheek wordplay is far from absent: "You think about meaning more as an after word / As in afterward."
While "The Remote Part" contains five, maybe six freat song ("Century After Century" lingers in the air), the remainder slows down the album. "Out of Routine" and "Tell Me Ten Words" are formulaic and boring. "I Never Wanted" does not stand out in any way. These are decent songs, no doubt better than mediocre, but given what Idlewild is capable of, they're disappointing.
But "In Remote Part / Scottish Fiction" makes up for these disappointments, coupling Idlewild lyrics and music with, in its second half, a poignant spoken poem performed by Glaswegian Poet Laureate Edwin Morgan. The last song, it carefully piles instruments on top of one another to create, by its end, a solid movement of sound, lush and unsettling, a disarmingly powerful coda to an album that pushes Idlewild to a new level. But they can go higher.
Grade: 3.5 stars
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