Scottish Indie Rock Group Idlewild Released The Anthemic New Single “Like I Had Before”

The Scottish alternative rock band Idlewild returned this summer with the welcome news of a self-titled album, their first since 2019, to land October 3rd via V2 Records. Its first single ‘Stay Out Of Place’, premiered by Steve Lamacq on his BBC 6 Music show, saw enthusiastic press support internationally and reborn love from their fanbase. It also went on to make the BBC 6 Music playlist.

Its emotive, widescreen follow-up ‘It’s Not The First Time’ was similarly warmly received, a glorious piano-led ballad that wouldn’t have felt out of place on ‘The Remote Part’.

Today Idlewild share a third and final single from their upcoming album, ‘Like I Had Before’, another melodic anthem that’s as immediate as anything to come from the band past and present.

Roddy had the following to say about the latest single from ‘Idlewild’:

“Songs can transmit what they have received with a peculiar force, a force which drives communication deep into the listeners mind. Sometimes I’m asked – which one of your albums is your favourite? This one, or the next one is what I reply.”

The band also filmed a live performance of ‘Like I Had Before’, directed by Oscar Sansom, this July at Leith Theatre.

Produced by Rod Jones (who also mixed the record) and Idlewild, ‘Idlewild’ is the tenth studio album from the group and was written over 2024 at Post Electric Studios in Edinburgh and the Isle of Iona Library in the Hebrides.

Since forming in Edinburgh in 1995, Idlewild have been a lot of different things. They were a teenage punk band, slinging buzzsaw riffs and barbed refrains on their seminal early records ‘Hope Is Important’ and ‘100 Broken Windows’, before becoming one of the most compelling mainstream rock groups of their generation with ‘The Remote Part’, an album that debuted at number three on the UK charts behind Oasis and Red Hot Chili Peppers in 2002.

On either side of a 2010 hiatus, which allowed them to branch out along fresh creative avenues, from solo albums to production work for other bands, they made widescreen indie-rock, ruminative folk-rock and, with 2019’s thrillingly inventive ‘Interview Music’, sprawling art-pop. Across the ten songs of ‘Idlewild’ they welcome each of these past selves into the room, interrogating formative sounds with the vigour and curiosity of kids geeking out over Fugazi and R.E.M. while simultaneously exploring texture and harmony through the sort of road-worn chemistry that you can’t fake. As Woomble succinctly puts it, they sought out “big ideas, deep uncertainties, memorable tunes.”

“We’re looking back without being nostalgic — we were thinking about all the songs we’d made and the new songs we were making,” he observes. “For the first time we were referencing ourselves, not in a nostalgic way, in a positive, creative way, realising that we had a ‘sound’ and the songs we were writing should celebrate that. After it was all recorded and done, it felt fitting to simply title it ‘Idlewild’.”

‘Idlewild’ will be released on CD, standard black LP and two different limited colour vinyl editions.

Pre-order ‘Idlewild’ HERE

The band have also announced a string in stores and out stores for October in support of the new album in addition to dates later in that month now largely sold out.

Catch Idlewild live on the following dates:

September

13th – Black Isle Calling, Inverness

October

3rd – Circuit, Kingston ~
4th – The Dome, London ~ ^
5th – Cavern Club, Liverpool ~
7th – St Luke’s, Glasgow ~
8th – Liquid Room, Edinburgh ~
10th – Boilershop, Newcastle ~
11th – Project House, Leeds (SOLD OUT)
12th – Wulfrun Hall, Wolverhampton
14th – The Junction, Cambridge (SOLD OUT)
15th – O2 Academy, Bristol
17th – Koko, London (SOLD OUT)
18th – New Century Hall, Manchester (SOLD OUT)

December

5th – Beach Ballroom, Aberdeen (SOLD OUT)
6th – LiveHouse, Dundee
7th – Barrowland, Glasgow (SOLD OUT)

January (2026)

2nd – 5th – Rockaway Beach, Bognor Regis

~ instore / outstore show
^ also includes a day-time signing at Rough Trade East