I’ve really quite fallen in love with Idlewild recently, having seen them twice in the past two months (in Bristol and London). Now they’ve announced a five night retrospective of their career to date, playing five consecutive nights at the legendary Glasgow venue, King Tuts.

250 tickets per night are priced £15 or you can buy one of 50 wristbands/tickets for all 5 nights for £50!

Catch them at the following nights:

Wednesday 17th December - ‘Hope Is Important’ and Others
Thursday 18th December - ‘100 Broken Windows’
Friday 19th December - ‘The Remote Part’
Saturday 20th December - ‘Warnings/Promises’ and Acoustic set
Sunday 21st December - ‘Captain’ and ‘Make Another World’.

“We first played here about 10 years ago… and it’s just as hot as last time!” commented Idlewild’s Roddy Woomble mid-way through their sell-out set at Bristol’s Fleece. Hot wasn’t the word – crammed to the rafters, the tiny ancient pub has obviously seen some hot ‘n’ sweaty ones, but I’d imagine last night was right up with the sweatiest of them all.

Opening up the evening they did as they did in London: a short acoustic set, a quick break, and then a full electric set with lots of B-Sides and rareities. Perfect for the obsessive Idlewild fan, not so for those not so familiar with their rarer b-sides. A lot chattier than last time, Roddy took requests – a girl yelled for “Meet Me at the Harbour”, which they launched into instead of the setlisted “Gone too Long”

The intimate show served as a warm up for a festival the band are playing today in the South West, having been asked to play by the Levellers who organised it. Asking the crowd what goes on at a Levellers festival, he shrugged and said “I guess they drink a hell of a lot of cider!”.

The band were on fine form – as tight as ever, stopping mid-song and restarting in perfect unison, and managing to make old songs sound as fresh as anything a band newer than them have done in years. Roddy, seemingly at ease with their longevity explained how he’d just turned 32, and some of the songs had been around since he was just 17.

By the time they went off stage at 11:20 Idlewild had came, seen and conquered the south of England. When they’ll be back on tour is anybody’s guess, but we were just lucky to catch them at the top of their game.

Remember when going to a gig left you feeling dirty afterwards? The sweat dripping off of you, your glasses knocked from your face, beer thrown around, and stinking like a cigarette factory? Well, tonight featured a return to those times (minus the cigarette smell) when I went to see Idlewild at ULU in London.

Choosing to save us the (occasional) torture of a support band, they decided to support themselves, playing two sets, first of all an acoustic set, before coming back to play a full electric set after “a little break in the room back there”, in lead singer Roddy Woomble’s words.

Their first acoustic set featured such crowd pleasers as “American English”, “No Emotion” and “El Capitan” as Roddy and the rest of the band warmed up, however quickly we realised that they were on top of their game, and we were in for a classic main Idlewild set. 15 minutes later the Scotsmen ambled back on stage for a set which was heavily B-sides and rarities based, which was great for the hardcore fans and not so great for the casual fan that had come out for a greatest hits set.

However, we did get some classics such as “Little Discourage”, “Love Steals Us From Loneliness”, “Out of Routine” and “Century after Century” along with one of the highlights by far of the evening, “Roseability”. The chorus call and response, “Gertrude Stein said ‘that’s enough’ / I know that that’s not enough now,” featured all 800-odd of the crowd yelling along, and the first of many crowd surfers, as the band returned to their harder sound of the first few records, before the folkier tinges of recent works.

Leaving a lot sweatier, and feeling like we’d just been trampled by a herd of elephants, Idlewild managed to show us that, even though they’re approaching middle age, they really are one of Scotland’s greatest bands.

After the jump: setlist and more photos

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Idlewild have announced their first tour since last October, playing three tiny shows in early July. Hopefully they’ll add some more venues to the list shortly!

Tickets go on sale at 9am this morning, 18th April.

Wednesday 2nd July - Birmingham Glee Club
Thursday 3rd July - London ULU
Friday 4th July - Manchester Ruby Lounge

This year’s Lodestar festival has been cancelled.

It seems that like so many festivals they have been plagued by weather problems, and thus has fallen behind with the organisation.

The three day event on the first weekend of September (August 31st - September 2nd) was set to include Badly Drawn Boy, Maps, Idlewild, Pigeon Detectives and The Rakes amongst others.

The word is that the first Lodestar festival may well be held next Summer.

As I predicted yesterday, Idlewild have indeed announced a full October and early November tour.

Tickets are going on sale at varying points from now to Friday 3rd August, so be sure to keep checking Ticketweb, Ticketmaster and See tickets as some dates are bound to sell out very very quickly.

Tuesday 9th October - Liverpool Academy
Wednesday 10th October - Preston 53 Degrees
Thursday 11th October - Leicester The Venue
Saturday 13th October - Sheffield Leadmill
Tuesday 23rd October - Portsmouth Pyramid
Wednesday 24th October - Princess Pavillion
Thursday 25th October - Exeter Phoenis
Saturday 27th October - Nottingham Rescue Rooms
Sunday 28th October - Warwick University
Monday 29th October - Cambridge Junction
Tuesday 30th October - London Koko
Thursday 1st November - Dublin The Village
Friday 2nd November - Belfast Mandela Hall

Those frankly lovely Edinburgh lads Idlewild have announced what appear to be the initial tour dates for a UK tour throughout October.

Expect more dates to be announced shortly, but in the mean time:

Tuesday 9th October - Liverpool Carling Academy
Tuesday 30th October - London Koko

Tickets go on sale at 9am tomorrow, Tuesday 31st July.

I’d never heard of Connect festival before yesterday, when I saw that their lineup had been announced. Wow. Whilst they don’t have bands who have the mass appeal of the likes of Arctic Monkeys (booo! Hisss!) or Snow Patrol, they do have some truley innovative, exciting and interesting bands that make you have faith in the music industry for once.

On the Friday they have:
Beastie Boys
The Jesus and Mary Chain
The Go! Team
CSS (Boooo! Hiss!!)
Nouvelle Vague
King Creosote
James Yorkston
Alex Smoke
Trashcan Sinatras

On the Saturday they have:
Primal Scream
Mogwai
Teenage Fanclub
The Divine Comedy
Modest Mouse
Sons & Daughters
Rilo Kiley
Vashti Bunyan
The Black Dog
The Only Ones
The New Pornographers
1990s

On the Sunday they have:
Bjork
LCD Soundsystem
Idlewild
Big Star
The Polyphonic Spree
My Latest Novel
Tilly & The Wall
Patrick Wolf

(my favourites in italics, in case you didn’t know!)