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Idlewild

A Modern Way of Letting Go

Label: EMI Records Release Date: 09/02/2003

6617
sean by Sean Adams February 14th, 2003

It starts with a billion bees sucking at Rod's guitar strings and ends in a tidy adrenaline whip of chaos. To an abrupt stop. Just as Colin's drums prepare to fall over. All they had to do was fill in the gap with some verses and choruses over a radio-friendly melody. Hook, line and sinker. Simple. 10 mins in the practice room and it's all done. Why can't more bands do it?

This single is the last off 'The Remote Part'... yadda..yadda..i love idlewild…blah, blah...after 20 plays you begin to really understand what Roddy's rambling about...blah-di-blah...played with coldgrey lately..blah..not as noizy as they used to be, but this is an exception...yawn, jizz, jizz, yawn... read all this lameass press release shit before, yeah? Got the album, already know what it sounds like? Me too.

But what you don't read about, mostly cus the media's more interested in whether the guy from the Vines has killed his talentless self yet or whether the debut single from The Kitchen Sinks is exactly like a arghNargh band circa 1975, nuff, to be cool...

I digress....

What you don't read about is how this is the updated screamed ode to teens 'YOU JUST HAVE TO BE WHO YOU ARE!', aimed perfectly at all of those fools who missed out on those days when their gigs finished with the band struggling to their feet.

Call me an elitist fuck if you wanna, but singles do my head in! (I gotta write something or other, don't I?) You can't get a band from one song. Yeah, this one song is good, but it's only being released so Mark and Lard can play it or some lazy fuck who's got nothing better to, can get paid for to write about it. Singles are a waste of time in my book. They're just a marketing ploy. And not a very clever or inventive one at that. It means acts that only have one half decent song on their album can flog you their terrible other 11tracks. The singles charts is mostly bought by 8 year olds and teams of people working for The Man, to give the media and the music industry something to hang their week around and if you give someone enough rope...

Anyway... If you've not got the new album, more fool you bucko! You will not know that Roddy's still dealing with those ultimate questions. He's less searching for answers now, more giving out a few pointers. He's still "lost" at every turn tho - only now he's half-rhyming it with "most". You won’t have been able to join in any of the nerds debate either, asking whether the use of the word "lost" is a reference to the line from 'Hope Is Important', "I don't have a map".Oor discuss whether the chorus "a modern way of letting go" is a confession to the fans that they've caved in to the demands of the EMI corporation.

Singles are meant to sell albums, yeah? Well you got this far, now go fucken buy TRP or at least download it off Kazaa and then buy it when you've got the money.

In conclusion, all you should really be worrying about is: why can't more bands do this?

"Someone should really tell me what I really want to know..."

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