Idlewild

Warnings/Promises

(Capitol)

Record Review by Daniel Brody

Last time Idlewild toured America, they spent some time opening for Pearl Jam, and Warnings/Promises seems like a response to that experience.  It’s easy to imagine Idlewild watching arenas and sheds fill up with fans, thinking about attracting an audience that large, and deciding to make an album that fulfills that function.  Their latest is a bright, shiny, and well-produced batch of songs that alternates between fist-pumping anthems and lighter-flicking pretty ballads.

The rock star calculation on the album makes for some awkward moments.  When “Goodnight” starts out with a strumming acoustic guitar, then suddenly launches into an avalanche of distortion, strings, and drums, it’s difficult to not to wonder whether the band owns a copy of Monster Ballads.  The songs are overeager puppies, begging to be blasted and top volume and sung in unison at soccer matches.  Putting twelve songs this insistent on one album makes for an intense, almost stressful listen.  The rockers, like “Love Steals Us From Loneliness” and “I Want A Warning,” sound like present-day U2 in a sour mood.  The ballads, with their chiming guitars and Roddy Woomble’s Michael Stipey vocals, sound like R.E.M. circa Out of Time.  It all sounds beautiful, but it is all skin deep.  Everything feels airbrushed, as if the album is playing to the lowest common denominator of hipster.

Warnings/Promises is pleasant, but too bland to either crack America’s mainstream or appeal to the indie rock crowd.  The album’s big sounds prop up pretty ordinary tunes, and the result is the audio equivalent of empty calories.