Last year they spent all their fireworks. The incendiary punk blast of "Captain" and (most of) "Hope Is Important" saw Idlewild shoot into the night sky, blazing a multicoloured stream of sonic mayhem in their wake.
Now, less immediately "oooh, aaahhh" crowd-pleasingly spectacular, they are back with some long-awaited new
material. "Little Discourage" has stripped away the pyrotechnics and histrionic spasms of old, and has revealed a tune of wonder. Part REM, part Nirvana, all Idlewild (the trademark repetition of the chorus, the blazing guitar outro - they're still there), "Little Discourage" is less likely to make small children run away in the street; or cause old people's ears to bleed. Despite that, it is still a mighty return. If anything, they have managed to retain the flash-and-it's-gone brilliance of before, freeze-frame it, bolt on a tune and present something new and fresh, blinking in the sunlight.
"A Tone" follows, and is a dirty-faced Stooges-y guitar workout, punctuated vocally solely by Roddy briefly screaming from what sounds like inside a telephone box. Then follows "Broken Windows", a bass-heavy bit of drone rock that circles your stereo like a rabid dog.
CD2 has a live version of "You Don't Have The Heart", which douses the stage in petrol before running around with a lit match and a manic look. Featuring a riff straight out of "Learn Guitar The Sonic Youth Way", and a screamed chorus that would make Black Francis reach for the throat lozenges, this is sonic terrorism of the highest order. Turn on, tune in, jump around, kill your parents. "1990 Nightime" is a slow bit of experimental Pavement-wannabe noodling, and is Better Best Forgotten (© Steps, 1999).
Still the best new band in Britain.
Rating: 10/10
Poor Gorky's. Constantly trying to grow in SFA's big undeserved shadow, they do their best. Cranking out
country & western-tinged surrealist manifestos ("Woke up on Monday & got ready for school, put on my uniform - it was three sizes too small") with distinctive vox and violas, GZM have not had one sniff of chartdom, or indeed much else at all. "Spanish Dance Troupe" is grade-A Mynci: a soundtrack to a spaghetti western set in the Welsh Valleys (someone make that movie now). The nagging doubt remains however that this is not the track that will propel them into the stratosphere. But hey, those crazy Mynci Bar Kids, they probably don't care.
"(Do The) Chicken In The Jungle" obviously wins the best title of the week award, and also scoops up any awards being passed out for being as mad as a jug of jellyfish. Top drawer, actually. "The Johnny Cash Lawsuit Song" is - predictably - a C&W number, although C&W sung by someone who's spent a bit too long investigating the medicine cabinet. Pretty crap, actually.
Still the best band from Wales.
Rating: 6/10
All hail the queen. Opening with one of her Catwoman-on-heat vocal "yeeeooowwws", from the outset you know what Britney's gonna give you - another brash and brassy loin-thrusting pop juggernaut that steamrolls over all your pale boys with guitars and rips out their innards with a hair-clip. Which works for me. Slightly retro (those 80s-style synth stabs are soooo Janet Jackson, darling), but saved by La Spears sassy and silky (thank you - you know who you are) vocals.
We get a couple of mixes: a "Dark Dub" one and a superior "Spacedust Club Mix" which spurts all over the dancefloor for a full 9 minutes.
I will not give this a score, as it would upset you all. So here's a nice photo instead.
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