The Skiver

Idlewild – Warnings/Promises (Parlophone/Capitol)

Back at the turn of the century, Idlewild were one of those critically acclaimed bands who never actually sold any records – a sort of latter day Wedding Present. Then they took themselves off to a Scottish island and returned with The Remote Part, a blistering, twisting barnstormer of an album full of wit, invention and simply great tunes. Suddenly the British public took notice.

In response, Idlewild did all of the usual rock group things – huge tour, festival appearances, sacking the bass player in favour of someone prettier (and, admittedly, less drunk) before decamping to America to record Warnings/Promises. And what a sad, sorry, disappointing effort it is. The musical equivalent of John Major, it shuffles in, does nothing much and then shuffles out again. It is as if, somewhere over the course of the last couple of years, Idlewild have been infected by the spirit not of rock, but of Coldkeane Patrol Senses and all of the other purveyors of that homogenised gunge that clogs up the nation’s airways like aural endometriosis. I so desperately wanted to like this album, but I cannot think of one redeeming feature about it. The songs struggle to get out of first gear, the most inventive musicianship comes on The Space Between All Things, yet is still largely nicked from the Pixies and 1980s Cure and someone has decided that the solution to this lacklustre performance is to drench most of the tracks in strings.

Must try harder. In fact, must relocate to a remote Scottish island and recruit an ugly bass player.

The Futureheads – The Futureheads (679 Recordings)

Re-released as a package including both their cover of Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love and a DVD in order to defeat internet pirates, this ought to be one of the best selling albums of the year. (It should be if there is any justice in the world, which we know that there isn’t, because if there was then bands like this would be huge and musical numpties like Lemar would be dustmen).

Sounding like the Strokes would if they came from the North East, had a sense of humour and could all sing, the Futureheads bring us three and four part harmonies, robots and the ghost of 80s New Wave pioneers XTC. Their quirky take on Hounds of Love will be the best known thing here (and will be loved and hated almost equally among those who have heard it, I am sure) but previous singles A to B and Decent Days and Nights both demand further listening and whilst one or two tracks do sound more like undercooked demos than proper material, there is the sweet knowledge that they are very unlikely to last longer than three minutes.

Kaiser Chiefs – Employment (B Unique)

Kaiser Chiefs were the darlings of this year’s Shockwaves NME tour – more entertaining than the Killers, funnier than the Futureheads and simply more talented than the grossly overhyped Bloc Party – yet 18 months ago, in their previous incarnation as Parva, they couldn’t get arrested, had been dropped by their label and were widely ridiculed in their hometown of Leeds, probably because no-one could believe that The Music were the best that a city of several million people could produce.

There are certainly times when Employment sounds like it was rush released to cash in on the new enthusiasm for Ricky Wilson et al. Indeed, you can almost certainly ignore the last four tracks and simply enjoy the other eight, from the opening Every Day I Love You Less and Less to the sublime Saturday Night. Some of the wordplay in the lyrics grates – “Pneumothorax is a word that is long/But I’m just trying to put the punk back into punctured lung” – but some of it is simply great – “We’re like birds of a feather/And you can be the fat one” – and I can guarantee that you’ll be humming like an idiot after the first listen to the singles I Predict a Riot and Oh My God.