Product Description
When Brit-pop was still in full-swing, Scottish rockers Idlewild were dropping out of art school and ingesting Fugazi, Superchunk "...and all those small bands on American indie-rock labels." A few gigs, a few seven inch singles and then in 1998 they released their Captain mini album via Steve Lamacq's Deceptivelabel (at the time home to Elastica) before signing to Food Records(then home to Blur). Then, when every new British band from Coldplay to Badly Drawn Boy trotted around with an acoustic guitar, they delivered their debut full-length of erratic punk rock, Hope Is Important.

Unlike most modern bands Idlewild have been able to develop into a tamed beast that purrs like James Dean's Harley. They have toured and toured, garnered countless fans, picked up gold and silver sales discs, scored top 10 singles, released a Best Of and a B-Sides collection, not to mention have found themselves atop various year-end lists on both sides of the Atlantic, across Europe, in Japan and many other parts of the known universe.

Now, whilst digital divas and earnest bearded American men in plaid shirts are running amok, Idlewild are releasing Post-Electric Blues, an indie-rock album of Boss-like bombast, flecked with '70s synths and dashes of brass. It's an album that leaps from Fleetwood Mac epic folk/rock/pop peaks into joyous Loch-side sing-alongs. It's the sound of a deft and defiant band (completed by Rod Jones on guitar, backing vocals, keyboards; Colin Newton on drums, percussion; Allan Stewart on guitar and Gareth Russell on bass), exploring soundscapes whilst finding hooks and generally, genuinely and quite clearly, having a fookin good time.

"I wanted to have a more off the cuff feel to the record, with the words especially," declares Woomble and there's a definite sense of anything goes which produces a volatile warmth to the record. It's a balmy heat that comes from a meeting of punk rock at a crossroads with folk. This isn't some kinda mashed-up black-eyed beans and bratwurst genre-dump, it's just a rock record with a heart of strings, xylophones, hand-claps, trumpets, hammond organs and big nihilistic grins.

Written and recorded in a small practice room in Fife, Post-Electric Blues might not be a quintessentially Scottish album but at times a few of the distortion pedals sound like they're set to 'bagpipe'. Yet, clearly, this was an album made to play live.

The album is both a leap forward for the band artistically as well as conceptually. In 2007, when Idlewild became an unsigned band due to their label's financial woes, they took a chance and instead of chasing a deal, asked their fans to pre-order the album. The result of the experiment was a triumph, with over 3000 of their web-savvy tribe embracing the 2.0 record funding model.

Whilst they waited for the record to be written and recorded, members of their fanclub-like online community saw and heard work-in-progress snippets of Post-Electric Blues: "The fans of the band were part of this album and were entitled to see the songs being written and to feel a part of them," beams Woomble. "They paid for them to be recorded after all. In today's musical world when everything has to be available and instant and people get bored quickly (far too quickly in my opinion) this album was our attempt to get with the times. I suppose the album title reflects this. We all really like and appreciate the fact the fans paid for us to make this album and that all their names are inside of it."

1. Younger Than America
2. Readers & Writers
3. City Hall
4. (The Night Will) Bring You Back To Life
5. Dreams Of Nothing
6. Take Me Back To The Islands
7. Post-Electric
8. All Over The Town
9. To Be Forgotten
10. Circles In Stars
11. Take Me Back In Time

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00411RHGO/?tag=imwan-20

Bump: this is now going to be released domestically. See first post for updated details.