Idlewild
Idlewild
October 3, 2025News updates for 'Idlewild' by Idlewild
Scottish alt-rockers Idlewild share anthemic melodic single "Like I Had Before" from forthcoming self titled LP
The Scottish alternative rock band Idlewild returned this summer with the welcome news of a self-titled album, their first since 2019, to land October 3rd via V2 Records. Its first single 'Stay Out Of Place', premiered by Steve Lamacq on his BBC 6 Music show, saw enthusiastic press support internationally and reborn love from their fanbase. It also went on to make the BBC 6 Music playlist.
Its emotive, widescreen follow-up 'It's Not The First Time' was similarly warmly received, a glorious piano-led ballad that wouldn't have felt out of place on 'The Remote Part'.
Today Idlewild share a third and final single from their upcoming album, 'Like I Had Before', another melodic anthem that's as immediate as anything to come from the band past and present.
Roddy had the following to say about the latest single from 'Idlewild':
"Songs can transmit what they have received with a peculiar force, a force which drives communication deep into the listeners mind. Sometimes I’m asked - which one of your albums is your favourite? This one, or the next one is what I reply."
Check out the latest single below, for an upbeat anthemic slice of Idlewild's melodic hook-laden brit pop / alternative rock sound. You can also check out the other two previously released singles "Stay Out of Place" and "It's Not The First Time" for another taste of their 10 track forthcoming LP coming in October. So great to have Idlewild back with new music and we can't wait to share more on this release!
The Scottish alternative rock band Idlewild return with the news of a self-titled album, their first since 2019, to land October 3rd via V2 Records.
The band also share a first single from the record, the expansive 'Stay Out Of Place', a song that has all the innate warmth and melodic immediacy that has made them such a beloved act across the years. Premiered by Steve Lamacq on his BBC 6 Music show, frontman Roddy Woomble had the following to say about the themes behind it:"Walt Whitman was right, we do contain ‘multitudes’ – there is more than one “us” in there – we’re choosing a voice from among the many voices. This is especially interesting in a band context, because it's not just one voice, but five voices collaborating, over time. We arrange the world in our own order, but sometimes you’ve got to shake up expectations and forget about the instructions - I suppose that's what I'm getting at with 'Stay Out Of Place'. It felt like a good starting point and (re)introduction to Idlewild 2025..." Stream the new single below.
Produced by Rod Jones (who also mixed the record) and Idlewild, 'Idlewild' is the tenth studio album from the group and was written over 2024 at Post Electric Studios in Edinburgh and the Isle of Iona Library in the Hebrides. Since forming in Edinburgh in 1995, Idlewild have been a lot of different things. They were a teenage punk band, slinging buzzsaw riffs and barbed refrains on their seminal early records 'Hope Is Important' and '100 Broken Windows', before becoming one of the most compelling mainstream rock groups of their generation with 'The Remote Part', an album that debuted at number three on the UK charts behind Oasis and Red Hot Chili Peppers in 2002.
On either side of a 2010 hiatus, which allowed them to branch out along fresh creative avenues, from solo albums to production work for other bands, they made widescreen indie-rock, ruminative folk-rock and, with 2019’s thrillingly inventive 'Interview Music', sprawling art-pop. Across the ten songs of 'Idlewild' they welcome each of these past selves into the room, interrogating formative sounds with the vigour and curiosity of kids geeking out over Fugazi and R.E.M. while simultaneously exploring texture and harmony through the sort of road-worn chemistry that you can’t fake. As Woomble succinctly puts it, they sought out “big ideas, deep uncertainties, memorable tunes.”
“We’re looking back without being nostalgic — we were thinking about all the songs we’d made and the new songs we were making,” he observes. “For the first time we were referencing ourselves, not in a nostalgic way, in a positive, creative way, realizing that we had a ‘sound’ and the songs we were writing should celebrate that. After it was all recorded and done, it felt fitting to simply title it 'Idlewild'.”
'Idlewild' will be released on CD, standard black LP and two different limited colour vinyl editions.
