28.04.19 ScottishLife Gigging Music around Listening back to an interview with history NORTH Mary Ann Kennedy (above) plays from Glaschu, her album of original Gaelic songs inspired by her home city of Glasgow. The award-winning musician and broadcaster says the album tells part of the 800-year story of Gaels in Glasgow but is also “the story of every new arrival community in any city the world over”. Kennedy plays Aberdeen’s Lemon Tree on April 30 and Eden Court, Inverness, on May 1. SOUTH Note-perfect nine-piece Beach Boys tribute band Surf’s Up head to MacArts Galashiels on May 4 for a night celebrating the band’s classic mid-1960s period as heard on Today! and Summer Days (And Idlewild Summer Nights!!). May 4, Barrowlands, Glasgow; May 5, Music Hall, Aberdeen By NADINE McBAY HEN a musician says Woomble says he’s glad the band held off Edinburgh band made the “sound of a flight they don’t listen to releasing the record in 2017, as was their of stairs falling down a flight of stairs”. their records, you original plan. “That stayed with us for years, that might wonder why Begun in Los Angeles in spring 2016, it quote,” says Woomble warmly. “By the mid anyone else should. So was completed in November 2018 at Post noughties, we were quite an accomplished it’s a good sign that Electric, the studio Jones runs in Leith, rock band. WRoddy Woomble, frontman of Idlewild for with the help of Dave Eringa, the producer “But it was a positive thing. That’s what EAST almost 25 years, gives house-room to new behind much of the band’s best-known people found exciting about the band. It album Interview Music. songs. was very chaotic from the audience point of Fife folksman James Yorkston Their second LP since a four-year break Bringing focus to their experiments, view and from the band point of view. And (above) tours his highly personal, at the start of the decade, it’s the sound of a Eringa helped shape the Janus-like quality it was magical sometimes.” highly inventive recent album The band back in love with itself, one bristling of Interview Music, a record which looks Sparks of magic fly off this new record, Route To The Harmonium, his first with ideas they’re eager to share. forward to new possibilities while the band’s chemistry shaken up by Rossi, solo LP in five years after two It more than vindicates the decision of acknowledging their edgier, DIY origins. who studied jazz, and Mitchell, solo artist acclaimed records with Jon Woomble, guitarist Rod Jones and Whether intentionally or not, that and frontman of Dundee’s Hazey Janes, Thorne and Suhail Yusuf Khan. drummer Colin Newton to return to sentiment is echoed in Bad Logic, a slacker- immediately “clicking” with the band. Yorkston’s long-term producer making music together in 2014. punk track based around a William Morris “Lucci is a fantastic musician, as is David Wrench described The And unlike 2015’s solid Everything Ever quote: “The past is not dead, it is living in Andrew, though he’s more from the self- Route To The Harmonium as Written, it’s their first record where new us, and will be alive in the future which we taught school like the rest of Idlewild,” says “easily one of his finest records”. members Luciano Rossi and Andrew are now helping to make.” Woomble. He plays Edinburgh’s Summerhall Mitchell – aka acclaimed young composer “That song was built around the idea of He adds: “All of what we do came from on May 2 and Oran Mor, Glasgow Andrew Wasylyk – were fully integrated carrying your past wherever you go,” playing with each other. We were punk rock on May 3. into the song-writing unit. explains Woomble. “That can be a positive kids when we were 18 who wanted to be in “I’ve been going back to Interview Music thing, it’s not necessarily negative.” a band and make a lot of noise.” more and more,” Woomble says. Dream Variations and Same Things Despite their tenure, Woomble says there WEST “It really works as an album and fizzes Twice, the two singles so far, embody those are no expectations for Interview Music. Daryl Hall and John Oates play with a good kind of energy. There are a lot elements: the first a cracking space rock jam “Things change so much and we have no Glasgow’s SSE Hydro on May 1, of ideas crammed on to there. With hewn to a tight melody, the second a idea how it will go,” he says. with support from KT Tunstall. repeated listens, it does bring more and dignified update on their early sound. “At the moment we just want people to more stuff out of it.” That punky racket memorably inspired listen to the record. All of us are quite Speaking from his home in Mull, one journalist to froth how the then young proud of it.”.