Interviews

Guitarist Allan Stewart

Interview: Idlewild

They're back. After tours supporting Cold Play and Pearl Jam last year, Idlewild are back in headlining mode with their upcoming UK tour, including Reading on Friday 8th April. The band have become household names since The Remote Part went straight into the album charts at number three. Now with new album Warnings/Promises (which incidentally the band just call Warnings and Promises rather than pronounce the slash) they are tipped to become even bigger.

And with bigger comes 'busier', as guitarist Allan Stewart confirms, speaking from his home in London, a little weary from filming the video to their new single from 7am until 1 am yesterday.

Do they have time to take part in Comic Relief? "No but we were on Radio 1 last week for Comic Relief, telling jokes about drummers, and we've done this gig for the tsunami campaign in Glasgow a couple of weeks ago with Franz Ferdinand, Travis...in front of 20,000 people!"

With Warnings/Promises out on Monday March 7, the band will barely have time to scratch themselves with planned in-store gigs and signings, endless interviews and of course their upcoming UK tour.

Idlewild

This fifth album is the first featuring Allan as well as new bassist Gavin Fox, even though the guitarist is not a newcomer to the band. "I've been playing with the band for the past three or four years now", he says, "playing live with them on stage. For the Broken Windows album they needed to bolster the sound when they played live, so they asked me, I was friend of theirs, I didn't want to work in an office, so I said yes!  They then asked me to play with the band as I've toured with them for the last two records."

And while he says touring takes it toll, it is nice meeting people and travelling to new places. Video-making however, is just "boring". While he can't really reveal the content of their new video, other than that it's "generally a performance video", he says: "It's really not as glamorous as you think, it's a long process with lots of waiting around in a cold studio, it's quite tedious."

Even being interviewed all day is infinitely preferable, "Yeah I'm doing phone interviews all day today but at least I'm sitting in my house, in a nice warm room with a nice cup of tea!"

Nice hot beverages will be replaced with cheap beer when they come to Reading however. Playing at the Hexagon in April on a Friday, he plans to revisit some old haunts from when he lived down the road in Farnborough. In particular there is the Purple Turtle in Gun Street and the After Dark club in London Street. "Reading's great" he says, not without a hefty dose of sarcasm.

"I went to Reading for gigs and I went to the Reading Festival every year. I used to go to places like the After Dark. We obviously planned to play on a Friday so that we could go to the After Dark afterwards," he says dead-pan, "I've not been for years, also I used to go to the Fez Club when it was still Alley Cats. I'm good friends with Hundred Reasons (also from Farnborough way) and I really wanted to see them when they played the Fez last year."

So now as a fully fledged member of the band, has he contributed a different kind of sound to the album? "Well it pulls it in a different direction, Warnings and Promises sounds different compared to the last albums and my guitar style is different. I play a lot of acoustic stuff, and now Rod (Jones - other guitarist) doesn't have to focus on both the lead and rhythm anymore. But if you have a different guitarist it's always going to sound different, you have to go through the process of finding a balance, until it gels." 

He adds: "Everyone has also written collectively on this album, so it's also going to be different than if you get just one person writing all the songs. Roddy writes all the words and melodies but collectively we all decide on the music stuff. It's a long process and sometimes it can be frustrating, but it's much more enjoyable."

Not as enjoyable as a night down the After Dark I'd wager. Catch them at the Hexagon, Queen's Walk, Reading on Friday 8th April. Click on the top right-hand links for more info.