Woomble reconvenes the old team, back on Mull, with his most open and organic work for ages.

Release date: 11th October 2024

Label: Assai Recordings

Format: CD / Vinyl / Digital

the Hebridean muse continues

Woomble, once, and still nominally, the frontman of Scots indie darlings, Idlewild, has long kept up a parallel solo career, in which he has explored an ever varying and variable set of styles and influences. Of late this has seen him explore electronic vistas, with each release seemingly taking him further and further from the deeply introspective folkie that populated the earlier solo releases.

Indeed, I had thought the traditionally inclined acoustic troubadour of 2006’s My Secret Is My Silence had been put to bed, each successive release seeming to take him far away from the croftside, where that iteration of his career had first unfurled. But a brief set of dates, in 2021, with Kris Drever and John McCusker, suggested he hadn’t entirely forgotten his Hebridean muse, they reprising their 2008 joint release, Before The Ruin, even if his next release was the analog synth and drum machines of Almost Nothing.

Don’t misunderstand me, this isn’t a full blown return to pipes and whistles, but is certainly a much more organic state of affairs. This may well be, in part, to his again working alongside Sorren Maclean, the guitarist and songwriter from Mull, who partnered much of Woomble’s writing and playing between 2011 to 2017, albums two to four. All eleven tracks here are co-writes with Maclean, with him also adding guitar, banjo and some of the bass and keyboard duties. Woomble is also a Mull resident, and it is on the Inner Hebridean island that this recording took form, written in front rooms and recorded in an old church. (And vinyl junkies might appreciate this, the album is released on Assai Recordings, as in the excellent Scottish chain of record shops, Dundee, Edinburgh and Glasgow.)

the blue rose code comparison

Track one is Still So Far To Go. It starts with a warm broth of piano and picked guitar, before Woomble’s distinctive vocal sidles in. Always a narrator of near tone poems, here he gets as close to a straightforwardly sung song as he gets, the lyrics a narrative easy to follow. It is a light and delicate melody that sits very comfortably, with Maclean adding secondary shimmers of electric guitar around the edges. A rhythm section wallops in for Break Up The Sun, which is more in keeping with his usual style, sentences heavy with word play. (This is a good thing.)The bass and drums provide a basic ballast, from Mike Gordon and Danny Grant, in that order, and Maclean is foot fast to the floor on his fuzz pedal, with Glasgow jazz-folk fusioneer, Matt Carmichael adding some honks of saxophone, a foghorn offshore. So far, so fun.

Still Painting A Picture Of You begins with what sounds like studio conversation, with an agreeably bouncy mix of banjo and fiddle leaping out. The realisation is suddenly that Woomble seems in a happy place. If his previous form can suggest a deeply melancholic soul, unless that is just the result of island winters, here he seems to have discovered a pop consciousness. It seems this track is actually a live performance, with Woomble responsible for drums, guitar and vocals, one man band style, Maclean adding the banjo and the fiddle coming from another longterm associate, Hannah Fisher. I’m picking up a hint of Lloyd Cole in his lighter moments, his career arguably similar, flitting between the electronica and organica.

Another flicker of comparison might be with Ross Wilson, aka Blue Rose Code, a fellow countryman, with no shortage of heartfelt soulfulness. But that doesn’t last, as the next song finds him channeling more the more windswept aspects of Mike Scott, at least as it starts. The song, Theoriser, has some soul baring, and is constructed in two parts, the first a rush of narrative, with the second left to his band to flesh it out, guitar, piano and rhythm section, bridged by sounds of breakers on the shore. It’s nice. I’m uncertain on quite which tracks, but much of the piano on the album comes from Woomble’s 16 year old son, Uist.

an idiosyncratic style

Old Negatives brings back Carmichael, with breathy blasts of mystic Celtic horn, à la Van the man, but the song is one of Woombles trademark introspectives, comparing old negatives, as in the photographic sense, with dissolving dreams. Again, after a verse or two, he leaves it to the band, Carmichael especially, to take it home. An orthodox 4:4 beat carries forward the theme of I Can Make Sense Of Now, with an elegant banjo line running counter to the vocal line, electric guitar adding additional atmosphere. Trying to find an example of Woomble’s lyrical style, “And even after all this rain, the best intentions stay the same, like the various shades of grey in heaven” jumps out as being eminently identifiable, typical of his own peculiar idiosyncracy.

Good Despite Everything, a classic Woomble title, has him crooning over guitar and harmonium, as if the kitchen window open and the mist billowing in. Free of fuss or excess instrumentation, it is a strikingly honest song, imprinting indelibly as it unfolds, a high water mark. Lovely. Read It Like A Secret is another Cole-alike, in mood. (A Cole versus Woomble literary contest would be quite something to witness, writers each with a knack of finding always not quite the word you’d think of first.) Electric piano plays and a dreamy saxophone solo enters, allowing Woomble to repeat his concerns: “I can’t work out if it was something you said to me, or I said it to you“.

a christmas hit?

All Things Considered is possibly the song that carries the greatest link to the first solo album, both in melody and mood, even as the band strike up from the bridge. Fisher adds some harmonies, as electric piano, electric guitar and fiddle weave some immaculate Hebridean’n’western. Then, just as the pleasure of the moment sinks in, Woomble goes all Chris Rea for a Christmas song. And if he isn’t, necessarily, driving home for Christmas, it seems all far too jolly, even if it is entitled, and about, Christmas Without You. Most odd. Not unpleasant, but out of any perceived character. A bid for a surprise December hit single?

On reflection, this is less a return to the previous junctions it seemed first to be, but more a further station along his ever changing way. There seems more joy in his heart, which, given the album, as a whole, is, in part, a response to his awareness of ageing, might seem strange. Call it acceptance and it makes much more sense. Is this the least Woomble typical release or the most? If don’t know the answer to that question, I am enjoying the record enormously.

Try All Things Considered:

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