Roddy Woomble – Everyday Sun: EP Review

By Chris H on 25th March 2020 • ( Leave a comment )

Roddy Woomble, frontman of Idlewild, releases an EP that could be seen as a departure for the Scot.

Release Date: 27th March 2020

Formats: CD / Vinyl / Digital

You get the impression that if Roddy Woomble had been given the choice to be a poet or a rock star he would have chosen the former. The Idlewild frontman has come a long way from the screaming noise pop punk rock of his band’s debut album Captain, released way back in 1998. Listen your way through the band’s records, and Woomble’s subsequent solo career and this new EP makes largely perfect sense. The sound of a man mellowing, connecting more fully with the world around him and becoming more and more entranced by intricate words and simple melody.

These days Woomble’s Instagram is dominated by him walking around picturesque, remote landscapes, often with a poetry book in hand. It comes as no surprise to hear then, that this EP was “conceived in a teepee in the Scottish Highlands.” Everyday Sun is a departure, but not a surprise. Woomble actually published a book of poetry, Instrumentals, back in 2016. The songs here are a combination of spoken word poetry over electronic, ethereal beats and accompanying mini-melodies. Hip Hop for the Highlands if you will. The anomalous track is actually Secret For The Last Time, a beautiful little folk song that would sit happily on any of Woomble’s solo albums.

Woomble says of final (17 minute!) track RW OC Cuttup, that it’s “a very meditative and rewarding listen – good to have on headphones while you are climbing a hill in the drizzle, or indeed sitting around a bonfire in the Cairngorms sipping Glenlivet.” There’s a meandering, long footpath of mileage in that statement. Nature and the ocean are the dominant themes of these words, keeping up his wilfully and beguilingly perplexing lyrical style. Woomble admits that “many of the lines on the EP have been re-arranged so that they don’t make complete sense – maybe this has become something of my trademark over the years – for better or for worse.”

Roddy Woomble is testing us. ‘Presenting postulations’ as he would put it. Using his words, his music, his art, to encourage us to ask questions, but not necessarily expect answers. This is an EP worthy of your time and your attention. Listen closely.