Close your eyes. Imagine ‘a flight of stairs falling down a flight of stairs’. That was how Idlewild were famously described at the dawn of their career. Open your eyes. It’s more than ten years later. From the fiery and shambolic post-hardcore exuberance of their early days, the band have travelled the sonic spectrum taking in folk music and elegiac pop-rock. Having been around the block as much as Idlewild have, you’d imagine that they’d attracted a dedicated hardcore fanbase and grown savvy to the tricks of the record industry. For their latest album ‘Post Electric Blues’, not only have they utilised both of these attributes to great effect, but also made one of the most beautiful and coherent albums of their career. ANDREW TRENDELL catches up with guitarist ROD JONES, to discuss their fans, their sound and giving power to the people…
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AT:The last time I saw you guys was on the Scottish Fiction Tour for your greatest hits. When a lot of bands go through their latest hits, they say they often learn what they’re best at and what they’re worst at and sometimes it’s just a celebration of all the ground they’ve covered. What was the experience like for you guys?
RJ: I liked it purely because it was interesting to play a bunch of songs that we haven’t played for a while. It was quite reaffirming to see such a cross section of age ranges at our shows. Some of the younger Idlewild fans were probably being born when the early records were coming out. That really spurred us on and led to the idea of doing those shows where we played all of our records; that was also a really amazing experience. It was quite an undertaking to pull off all of the old songs with Gareth and Gavin. It was a really interesting thing to do and in a way it was good to sweep all of that aside and get on with the new record.
Idlewild @ Rescue Rooms, by Andrew Trendell
AT: Post-Electric Blues is amazing. It’s a really rich, beautiful and coherant album. As a band, you sound quite comfortable…
RJ: Yes, for the year preceding the making of the record, we’d been having a bit of a rant. The record company in particular had been spending so much time trying to catch people who illegally download music rather than encouraging people to actually buy it; which is of course a much more positive way to go about it. So I came up with this idea of doing this pre-order thing which felt like it was a good way to get people involved and caring about music again. When we started doing that I had a few sleepless nights thinking “Oh, what I have got this band into?” and worrying that they’d all kill me if it didn’t work out. It just gave us that feeling of being in control again. It bought us some time to really think about what we wanted to do and there was no pressure involved at all because people had already ordered the record. They didn’t know how it was going to sound but it gave us the freedom to make whatever record we felt like. I think the reason we sound so comfortable is because we had the freedom to try out so many things. I think what comes across more than anything is the sense that we’re having fun, which we did so much more on this record than we have in a long time.
AT: I wasn’t expecting the xylophone on ‘Readers and Writers’.
RJ: Yeah, that’s because I’ve got a bit of an obsession with E-Street Band, so quite often at night after people have gone to bed or gone home or whatever, I’ll just go to town a little bit and crack out the trumpets, and try to utilise my failing trombone skills just to make a brass noise. We just wanted to try all these things to make it sound a bit more cacophonous and a bit more off the wall. We just wanted to sound like a band having a good time in a sort of Flaming Lips or E-Street band kind of way. Those sort of instruments have that effect. The pre-order thing just gave us the time to experiment. It was a really positive experience for everyone. Everyone who pre-ordered it seems to have loved being part of it.
AT: So, can we expect some Boss style three hour set lists and knee skids?
RJ: Well we like to play about 20 to 22 songs, but it’ll never be a Springsteen set because the songs don’t go on for 10 minutes each. Springsteen never takes a support so he can play for as long as he likes really. We always love to have support bands but if you’re the boss then it’s a different story.
AT: In terms of sonics and themes, what were you trying to achieve on the new album?
RJ: We weren’t interested in making another noisy and brash rock record, because we’d just done that. It’s not that I don’t like that type of music anymore; we just always want to try something different. At the time, a lot of the music that Roddy and I were listening to was a lot more catchy and melodic and that’s all we were trying to do. It’s just about trying to make your own thing out of what everybody is listening to. Obviously whatever you’re listening to is going to have a massive effect on what you write at the time. It’s not plagiarism but subconsciously you’re always going to make music that sounds like what you’re listening to at the time. Obviously with five of us, we’re all listening to different things and when you bring that together it doesn’t sound like anything else. It’s just circumstance really. You never know what it’s going to sound like until you start writing. We never go into a record thinking “Oh, we’re going to make this kind of record”. It’s just trial and error. We just started writing and that’s the way the record started to sound. Once you’ve got three or four that cohesively fit together, that’s when you decide to write more in that kind of area. There’s always one or two that stand out, that you kind of hang the record on and I think that ‘City Hall’ and ‘Younger Than America’ are the ones that we hung the direction of the record on. Everything else just falls into place after that.
Idlewild @ Rescue Rooms, by Andrew Trendell
AT: Are there going to be any more singles from the album?
RJ: I don’t know actually. I imagine maybe Younger Than America or City Hall.
AT: Will you be using the Pre-Order method in future?
RJ: Yes we’ll definately be doing it for future releases we’ve got coming up. I think Cooking Vinyl, who later released the album, are happy for us to do that as well. It just works really well, we all enjoyed it and it’s a good way to do it.
Idlewild @ Rescue Rooms, by Andrew Trendell
AT: You’re last two records were criminally underappreciated, especially ‘Make Another World’…
RJ: ‘Make Another World’ was just really badly promoted. It came out at a time when you couldn’t sell records for anybody. I don’t know, but we’ve made a living out of doing this for fifteen years now and I don’t think that’s an underachievement. It’s a great thing that we’re still able to do that. We’re in the loyal position of having a really loyal hardcore fan base who will come and see us play every time we do. If you just play excessively then you’re going to make a living out of it. If you keep going then you might get some radio play or you might not. It’s not really something that we lose sleep over. We’re making a living and we’re enjoying ourselves still so we keep doing it.
AT: You’re an ever evolving band and you’ve never made the same album twice, yet it always feels like ‘Idlewild’. What would you say that’s intrinsic to the Idlewild sound?
RJ: I think that’s just down to the way that the band is put together. Obviously Colin’s got his own drumming style, I’ve always played on the records and Roddy’s voice is very distinctive and all of these elements have always been there. You always worry about something sounding too much like something else. At one point we worried about one song sounding like The Smiths, but of course it’s not going to sound like The Smiths because Roddy sounds like Roddy. You can always tell an REM record because Michael Stipe is singing or The Smiths because Morrissey is singing. You don’t have to worry about that when you’ve got a distinctive singer like Roddy. Then there’s the harmonies and the way that everything comes together and that’s just our sound and I think people recognise that. We never really think about it but it’s always going to sound like an Idlewild record. Obviously things have changed a bit because members have come and go over the years, but intrinsically it’s the same core of the band.
AT: Has your approach the songwriting changed much in the last 15 years?
RJ: Obviously it’s changed as members have come and gone but essentially it’s the same. We start out with a bunch of riffs and then we just build on that. We write a load of music and Roddy will try and put words to it. With ‘The Remote Part’ we wrote a lot of parts on acoustic guitar and then just built on those. When Alan, Gavin and Gareth came along we tried to make it more of a band effort and try and write a rock record together. We’ve just become more collaborative over the years. We’ve come full circle in that sense. It just changes from day to day. You can write songs in many different ways. It can start with a melody that you can build on or from a riff or whatever. There are all sorts of ways and we try to use all of them. Each record was always one way or another before but now I think it’s a mixture of everything.
Idlewild @ Rescue Rooms, by Andrew Trendell
AT:What’s influencing the band at the moment, and have you altered the ways in which you are influenced over the last 15 years?
RJ: Not really, I think life influences us. We’re all different people. Some of us have got kids, some of us are married, some of us live in different places. We live different lives and we’ve grown up, and with that our musical spectrum has grown as well. The more life experience you have the more influenced you become and it effects the way you write music. You’ve got to have something to write about, so life will always be the main factor.
Idlewild @ Rescue Rooms, by Andrew Trendell
AT:You’ve achieved quite a lot in the last 15 years. What does the band still hope to achieve and how does that measure up against your old ambitions?
RJ: I don’t think that we’ve ever had any kind of aspirations in that way and I think that’s always what’s kept us going. We just keep making records and we still enjoy it and that’s our only aspiration. We’ve got this really loyal fan base and it feels like that’s been consolidated by doing this pre-order. Those people are always going to be there and that’s a great feeling. We’re really appreciative and we just want to keep making great records for them.
Interview and Photos by Andrew Trendell
Tags: idlewild, post electric blues, rescue rooms, rod jones
