Review Summary: A transitional mess of an L.P, but still not terrible...
On 'Warnings / Pomises', Idlewild are a band very much in transition. The chaotic punk of debut 'Hope Is Important' had been slowly diminishing over the course of the band's following efforts; 'A Hundred Broken Windows', the sophomore record, still carried lots of gnarled guitars and shouting, but added more space and refinement to make what is mostly considered to be the band's masterpiece, whist third LP 'The Remote Part' added more pop to the equasion as well as a big budget sheen and brought the band a more mainstream audience.
Three years in the making, 'Warnings / Promises' certainly had some big shoes to fill... But, of course, the band didn't fill them. Instead, Idlewild released the weakest album of their career.
Now... That's not to say this album is a complete write off, No, indeed there are some of Idlewild's most magnificent tracks on offer here.
Lead single 'Love Steals Us From Lonliness' is a fantastic slice of power-rock, and one of the best examples of an Idlewild 'ballad'. 'Too Long Awake' is a great, near cathartic shoe-gazey song, if cut agonizingly short, whilst 'El Capitan' does the whole R.E.M chamber-pop thing with more confidence than they ever have done before.
But a lot of the tracks are awkward, seemingly stuck somewhere between the catchy pop-rock of 'The Remote Part' and a folkier direction. 'As If I Hadn't Slept' steals the riff from Teenage Fanclub's 'Take The Long Way Round' but then does nothing with it. The song has no consequence of any kind, it just... exists. Likewise, the penultimate alt-country-ish track 'Disconnected' has some nice steel lap guitar, but that's all there is to recommend about it.
And it's not just the softer tracks that suffer here. The metalic guitar screeches of 'I Want A Warning' are equally as flacid, seeming poorly produced in comparison to the rest of the songs. 'The Space Between All Things' has some great rockist guitar work (if a liitle similar to Morrissey's 'Southpaw'), but is let down by some really limp lyricism.
And that's the crux of the issue here; Lyrics. Roddy Woomble's lyrics have never before been thrust into as sharp a focus as on 'Warnings / Promises'. Previously, his words had always been part of the greater whole, just simple, catchy successions of sentances to drive the songs onward, merely providing a handful quotes and a sing-along chorus. But folk orientated songs need more effort and depth in the lyrical department, and Roddy Woomble didn't see fit to change his style along with the rest of the band. They had progressed. He was still stuck in exactly the same mode as 'The Remote Part'.
Woomble IS a good lyricist, and he did get his act together after the transitioning 'Warnings / Promises'. Just see the sweeping folk of his debut solo album 'My Secret Is My Silence' for proof. His lyrics are poetic and beautiful... And far, far in advance of the boring material featured on this record. Idlewild's following albums themselves showed giant improvements too, with 'Make Another World' perhaps being the peak of his lyrical creativity ("Let your tears fall in the shape / Of every one of the American states"). But on 'Warnings /Promises' there is little lyrical meat to sustain the tunes.
The worst offender on the album is 'Not Just Sometimes, But Always'. An utterly boring and insightless piece of drivel, it's the worst song Idlewild have ever made. It has no hook, with it's minimal acoustic composition framing a Roddy rant about absolutely nothing, except the fact that he thinks he's right about something(!?). It's useless in every possible way.
So yes, I consider this particular Idlewild LP a faliure. There are some fine moments on here ('Welcome Home' deserves a brief mention), but there are also a lot of average to below par offerings too. And within the genre that Idlewild have placed themselves, they are completely outclassed by thier forebearers R.E.M ('Automatic For The People') and Teenage Fanclub ('Songs From Northern Britain').
There are only so many hours to listen to music in any given day, and I feel 'Warnings / Promises' is just not worth my time, particularly when compared to those aforementioned genre classics, or Idlewild's other, far superior albums.
