Idlewild: If It Takes You Home

Ah, Idlewild – welcome back with your swelling REM-ish choruses, delicate arpeggiated verses and the comforting AOR paunch of a punk band slipping into middle-age while getting regular bed baths from the Royal Philha… AAAARGGGGGHH! SCREEEE! Brilliant! ‘If It Takes You Home’ is a virulent gut-punch of a comeback, with Woomble’s Charmy Army ditching all traces of the long-term unit-shifting career plan in favour of the Pixies-flecked ramalama rock blastathon of old that’s in and out in two minutes and leaves, priapic and cackling, with your daughters swept up in a big net. It’s a shame it often takes being dropped by a major for a band to rediscover the raging fires within, but this record could eat The Horrors for breakfast and wash it down with a cup of hot, steaming Muse. Shits on the film.