When Roddy Woomble looks back over Idlewild’s career, he sees a band constantly out of step with whatever is happening around them. With the hindsight of being in a band whose 30th anniversary is starting to come into view, the frontman thinks it’s probably done the Scottish rockers a favour. “It’s allowed us to do our own thing,” he says over Zoom. “It’s not been a consideration if it fits in with the current trend or what people are listening to, it exists in its own little place.”
Woomble is not the sort of person to go sticking on his own records at home but he made an exception recently for his band’s 1997 mini-album Captain, reissued last month as part of National Album Day. “When you listen to an old record like that, it’s a bit like looking at a photograph of yourself when you were younger – you recognise that as you but at the same time you feel completely different from that, it feels a lifetime ago,” he says. Woomble was 19 when Idlewild made Captain and now he’s in his mid-forties. His life has been documented and reflected in the music he’s made.
