Idlewild
Everything Ever Written

Being a year late to review an album can be a double-edged sword: you've had a year to listen, listen, and listen to the record, but you also lose that sense of novelty and "first impressions" that the album made you feel. I'm doing it now simply because I've kept postponing and I think it’s time to stop procrastinating.

"Everything Ever Written" is the seventh album by the Scottish band Idlewild, released on February 16, 2016, by Empty Words. I should note that over the past year I have listened to this band a lot and without hesitation, I can say that it has become one of the bands I most enjoy listening to due to their rather varied discography, in the sense that without overdoing it (because we're not talking about a particularly "technical" band) they have managed to vary their sound over the years without distorting their original sound.

With that premise, this album comes after a disappointing (but for whom?) "Post Electric Blues" from 2009, which many believed was the album that marked the end of the Scottish band. And they weren't entirely wrong; the band broke up for a while but then, reunited, they released this new album, and in my opinion, the result is much more than decent. It starts off with two singles "Collect Yourself" and "Come On Ghost," which are two typical Idlewild tracks with a new element, especially in the latter, a finale with many sounds and effects that will practically accompany the entire album. With the third track "So Many Things To Decide," the tone drops a bit, and then transitions to what will be the opener for the concerts promoting this album, "Nothing I Can Do About It," perhaps the best track on the album, with a very catchy chorus, well-positioned female choruses with the only flaw being, in my opinion, that the drums sound too, too compressed. "Every Little Means Trust" is the big single, a good track that recalls their old works. Moving on, in my opinion, notable tracks include "(Use It) If You Can Use It" with a long but simply done guitar solo (and that's what I love!), and "On Another Planet," a song where you can clearly hear a return to their past. The rest flows positively without boring with tracks like "Radium Girl" with an intro that seems straight out of the '50s and "Left Like Roses" which sounds like it came out of the '80s.

I believe many people consider this a "minor group" with simple songs, in my opinion, they never went beyond the various singles that were quite popular in the early 2000s. The singer Roddy Woombie, even with this album, demonstrates excellent songwriting ability, and guitarist Rod Jones takes center stage this time, without overdoing it. What I like about this album is that, even though it comes after a not exactly positive moment for the band, they didn't try to make an album that sells millions of copies, they didn't look for easily sellable "pop" sounds, they simply wrote and played what they wanted to. And, given the trend of many bands in recent years, I feel like rewarding this gesture.

Probably if I had written this review right after listening to the album, I wouldn't have reached these conclusions, so, the conclusions are yours to make.