Zoe Graham may only be the support, but anyone who can joke that they are offering therapy because “I’m wearing a suit so it’s official” clearly understands how to make an impression. Add in the QR code inviting people to match their personality type to a track from her latest album and the whole thing feels idiosyncratic in the best way.
Backed by Finlay on drums and Sarah on synth and bass, Graham serves up a curious mix of dream pop and 80s sounds. “Push and Pull” opens with fragile synths, but the guitar lines are more strident than that suggests, so the song seems to float while still having shape. “Shift This Feeling” leans further into the 80s feel, all atmosphere and poise.
“Evilin” is a highlight, not least because Sarah switching to bass alters the dynamics and gives the song extra heft, while the drums sound absolutely huge. “Even Though I’m Scared” shows how these songs have a way of sucking you in, Graham’s voice ringing out like a clarion call. On “Good Girl” she works hard to get a singalong going – the solitary “woo” when she’d greeted Birmingham didn’t bode well – the backdrop initially sparse before it builds.
By the end, “Divine Feminine Energy” feels like the anthem it probably is, and Graham delivers it with real passion. Support act she may be, but Zoe Graham is nobody’s background music.
Reminders of ageing are everywhere. Albums I grew up with are 35 years old, and that is if I’m lucky. One minute you are buying records because they seem to belong to some urgent, exciting future, and the next you are hearing Roddy Woomble grin and say: “Some of these songs are 30 years old, man.”
Woomble, who is around a year younger than me, wears the air of someone entirely comfortable with that fact. And so he should. Idlewild are not here for some heritage lap of honour, not really. Quite the opposite. Last year’s self-titled tenth album felt like a rebirth, a statement of intent, proof that this band still has something urgent to say. So yes, there is history in the room tonight, but there is present too.
“Little Discourage” opens things in a way that makes that point immediately. It sounds heavier than memory suggests, the chorus still soaring in that way Idlewild choruses always have, like they are aiming for the back wall and beyond. “Like I Had Before” follows with guitar work and synths from the top drawer, all of it making the stage feel somehow bigger than it is. “A Ghost in the Arcade” arrives in a sea of guitar, somewhere between Ash and Biffy Clyro, and reminds you just how good this lot are at sounding both immediate and expansive.
“It’s Not the First Time” is led by the keys and proves again that some bands simply sound huge whatever size room they play. There is punk energy still coursing through the set, but there are harmonies now too, and even when the songs are tightly wound, Rod Jones cannot quite restrain himself as he whirls around.
From the newer material, “End With Sunrise” is hypnotic. Woomble stands square on and lets it build and build towards a proper crescendo, the kind that makes you realise the “new” Idlewild record deserves to stand shoulder to shoulder with the old favourites rather than politely behind them. “Here’s another older one,” he says at one point, and the place responds as one.
“Actually It’s Darkness” feels like it has been lovingly dusted off, and for a second you are back at the Flapper and Firkin in the 90s, when bands like this seemed to soundtrack their own early days without asking permission. “Paint Nothing” has angles and mood and ideas, while “American English” turns fully communal after Woomble’s crack about those 30-year-old songs. Everybody knows it, everybody needs it.
And somehow, even now, everything sounds anthemic. “I Wish I Wrote It Down” does. “Roseability” does, driven brilliantly from the back. “El Capitan” shows their class as storytellers. And “In Remote Part” begins in an understated way before it absolutely thunders, Woomble standing to the side of the stage and watching it all unfold.
The encore seals it. “The Bronze Medal” is perhaps the gentlest thing they play all night. “When I Argue I See Shapes” fizzes like a bottle of Irn-Bru and is greeted with the sort of roar reserved for songs that have lived alongside people for years. “You Held the World in Your Arms” is exactly that too. Then “A Modern Way of Letting Go” closes with proper punk energy, like a release.
The reminder, really, is this: to be a band for 30 years you need connection. Idlewild have that in abundance, not through bombast, statements, lights or fireworks, but through 90 minutes of superb songs.
