Idlewild is a band living at the right time. Every one of their five albums so far has been stuffed with filler, but amidst all that filler there have always been between two and five standout tracks of melodic, literate sad-boy guitar pop worth an iTunes download or a place on an indie-friendly-drama soundtrack. They're not so much making another world on their fifth album as they are revising R.E.M.'s world, but it's a formula that's worked for them since that Gertrude Stein song (as most people know "Roseability") established their pop chops almost 10 years ago.
The Scottish group actually took something of a step backward on its last album, 2005's overly sedate Warnings/Promises, after coming into its own on The Remote Part in 2002. Make Another World seems as though it's trying to make up the lost ground. "If It Takes You Home" feels like an advertisement for the band's more overtly rock credentials: The song's crunching guitars can't quite smother vocalist Roddy Woomble completely, but it's not for lack of trying, and the singer saves it with his verse melody and a workmanly chorus.
That song's sequencing right before "Future Works" shows the band's range, as the latter song is a pensive, horn-dappled march, roughly the equivalent of a ballad for a band that doesn't really write ballads. It's something of a descendent of the group's "American English", but where that song willed itself to become an anthem, this one seems to get distracted by its instrumentation, preferring to trail off and let the horns bring it to an anticlimactic, if pretty, conclusion.
So where are the standouts? Well, by my count there are three: two at the beginning and one at the end. Closer (before the bonus tracks on the U.S. version) "Finished It Remains" captures a bit of that "we're all in this together" sweep the band's best songs always have. Back at the front end, opener "In Competition for the Worst Time" is hobbled by the processing on Woomble's voice, but the third and fourth tracks deliver on its tease. The title track makes you wait for the big chorus, throwing a big guitar figure at you after the first pumping verse instead, but the wait is worth it. "No Emotion" is the show-stopper, though. It's arguably the danciest thing Idlewild has ever done, and Colin Newton's hi-hat abuse drives it straight into your head. The song is basically all chorus, with backing vocals providing extra hookage.
What Idlewild can't be accused of is complacency or laziness-- they obviously feel every note here, but it doesn't always hit home for the listener. Idlewild are either going to come through with a truly amazing record some day or release a really awesome "best of" comp sometime around 2010-- either way, their best songs are undeniable. The rest isn't bad, but a lot of Make Another World doesn't stick the way good guitar pop should.
