Pre-covid, Idlewild’s first Belfast show since 2016 was supposed to have formed part of their 25th birthday celebrations, with generous setlists that showcased the Scottish band’s trajectory from scrappy indie-punks, via the anthems of their early 2000s imperial phase, to a comparatively sedate middle age.
Instead, the band’s current Irish run is in honour of another anniversary: 20 years of The Remote Part, the band’s most successful (though not necessarily their best) album, played in full tonight.
Led by singles like the surging You Held The World In Your Arms and A Modern Way Of Letting Go, and especially the anthemic ballad American English, it’s the record that took this ramshackle indie band into the big leagues – albeit briefly – including arena tours with Coldplay and Pearl Jam.
And judging by the massed ranks of grizzled gig-goers at the Empire on this Friday night, it’s a record that still holds a place in many a Belfast heart.
Playing an entire album live, a lot depends on how it was sequenced in the first place. The Remote Part was particularly front-loaded, with its three best songs (those mentioned above) stacked up at the start.
It’s a blistering start before the pace slows for American English, which demands a singalong and frontman Roddy Woomble agrees, allowing the crowd to finish the song off on its own.
Less than 15 minutes in, these three highlights have all been dispensed with.
Always something of a reluctant frontman, Woomble is as unassuming as ever, singing with one hand nonchalantly thrust in the pocket of his jeans and more often directing his vocals towards the bar rather than the back of the room.
He introduces the twinkly Live In A Hiding Place – another that has the faithful joining the choir – as an anthem “for all the introverts out there, including me”. And while there are punchy renditions of Out Of Routine and Century After Century, these are after all album tracks, part of a lull before the big finish.
The album may have done its main business early but it saved one of its best for last – the near-title track In Remote Part/Scottish Fiction – and so it is here.
In an epic, extended version of an already expansive song, Rod Jones summons a glorious racket from his guitar as the words of the late poet Edwin Morgan play out over the squalling outro – as on the album. A perfect closer.
So in 40 minutes, the album play-through is finished and now comes the interesting part: a long encore. And perhaps because that 25th anniversary tour never made it to Belfast, the band treats us to a whistlestop version, weighted towards songs from their salad days around the turn of the millennium.
That said, Dream Variation – from the band’s 2019 album Interview Music – is one of the highlights of the night, a lengthy, rather proggy track far removed from anything we’ve heard so far, as if to say: “that was then, here’s what we can do now”.
From here on in though, it’s all fan favourites – a snarling Roseability and Little Discourage from 100 Broken Windows (2000), the gorgeous Love Steals Us From Loneliness and a rather lightweight El Capitan from Warnings/Promises (2005), and finally two gems for the punks in the room from Hope Is Important (1998).
It’s hard to believe that When I Argue I See Shapes and A Film For The Future were written and recorded by the same band as American English – and only four years previously – but the latter in particular has lost none of its bite.
A blistering mixture of Nirvana, Fugazi and Gang Of Four by way of Edinburgh, it’s performed without compromise from a band that has earned the right to take this lap of honour.
