4 out of 5

Label: Empty Words

Produced by: Rod Jones

A belated return and shuffling of members and Idlewild sounds rejuvenated; not necessarily their old punky selves but having been through the crucible of years of band growth into ‘maturity’ to deliver a clean and concise and comfortable folk album with dashes of rock.  Part of the deal of this kind of evolution, though, is that the players may now be producing age-appropriate music.  That is: adult contemporary.  It emerges in the verses on opener ‘Collect Yourself’ and then moreso in the same sections of follow-up track ‘Come On Ghost,’ pretty much flourishing in full on the next track, ‘So Many Things to Decide,’ the album holding onto the style until the last third or so of the disc – starting with ‘On Another Planet’ – where the group seems to veer more into the art-folk / art-rock they’d previously explored.  To be clear, this isn’t strictly a bad thing in my eyes.  Some of the stuff I listen to – primarily the latter 80% of Aztec Camera’s output – would classify as this category.  The difference being that I feel that was always present in Roddy Frame’s work to some extent, whereas it’s a new flavor to Idlewild the band.  Not so much to Roddy Woomble the solo artist, though, so not wholly surprising either.  But it makes ‘Everything’ stand a bit apart from the group’s catalogue (cover art included, as that could totally exist on a soft-rock playlist album) and, again, as with Woomble’s solo stuff, tends to allow the user to settle in and focus on his lyrics, which are generally a bit too forcefully poetic to be deep.  On the whole, the album flows together pretty well, and each song assessed as a singular thing is a solid, catchy accomplishment, regardless of genre.  The blazing guitars of the opener may be an attempt just to remind us the group can still rock, but the track does rock, infectiously so, and throughout ‘Everything,’ John Angnello’s sterile mixing allows for the extras – keys, feedback, strings – to bleed through at good levels, and Rod Jones captures Andrew Mitchell’s bouncing basslines well, making most songs toe-tappers.  When we do get around to more Idlewild-y sounding stuff, the band still has surprises in store, whether it’s a note of funk or an 80s beat or whatnot.

Idlewild may have lost that nervy edge that suggested they might flip into punk mode at any second (as they often would for one track or another), but the grown-up ‘Everything Ever Written’ is not a boring spit-up of maturity: it’s a well-rounded, fully enjoyable album from start to finish that maybe just works well with the equally grown-up audience that’s supported the band over the years.