Idlewild

Woomble, guitarist Rod Jones and drummer Colin Newton were central to the group that developed in the nineties. The Captain mini-album and Hope Is Important appeared in 1998, establishing a restless, abrasive sound. The writing already contained strong melodies, but the performances often seemed determined to reach them through a tangle of movement and noise.

100 Broken Windows followed in 2000, with Little Discourage, These Wooden Ideas and Roseability. The band gave the choruses more space and the guitar parts a clearer role in shaping the songs. Woomble's words could remain elusive, yet the vocal lines made a direct emotional connection. The record's force came from refinement rather than a simple reduction in volume.

The Remote Part arrived in 2002, bringing You Held the World in Your Arms and American English to a larger audience. The arrangements had greater reach, while the singing sounded more settled at their centre. The closing In Remote Part / Scottish Fiction included the voice of poet Edwin Morgan, making the record's connection to Scottish language and imagination explicit without turning it into a slogan.

Warnings/Promises in 2005 continued toward a more spacious, sometimes folk-coloured sound, with Love Steals Us from Loneliness among its principal songs. Heard across that sequence, Idlewild's development is unusually satisfying: the early urgency does not disappear, but finds new ways to move through a melody, a longer instrumental passage or a line allowed to remain unresolved after the guitars have eased back.