Idlewild - Idlewild - Live In Leeds (With Sons & Daughters)
[Refectory]

Glasgow’s Sons and Daughters fight valiantly against a crowd who are obviously here to see one band specifically, but the fine-suited four-piece’s muted anger does permeate some hearts – most notably through single Dance Me In. At once a blend of bright harmonies, Scottish accents and tight, dark musicality, tonight the band proves they are still pushing themselves forward. If singer Adele Bethel’s sultry but confident performance is anything to go by, their Anglo-American folk will be receiving plenty more airtime in the near future.

As blazing red lights capture guitarist Rod Jones bouncing on the balls of his feet to the melodic but driving sound of Little Discourage, you feel Idlewild are not going to take their own soft-folk accusations lying down; and with a bloodthirsty crowd baying at their heels, Idlewild’s baser instincts take flight. Although it’s the remaining three original members who are the clear veterans, the band seem fresh and newly motivated tonight. Although this can make them seem a little smug, they exude such a proud self-made attitude that this almost feels like a homecoming gig; even for cynics, it would feel cruel to deny them, and us, a good time.

The happy surprise of the evening is that the band rebuke the stools-and-acoustic-guitars route that their new LP might have allowed. Admittedly, it’s easy to be more drawn to the old knowns – the brutal bite of closer Film for the Future, the familiar grit of Roseability – but an astonishingly able double-guitar solo heads down the prog-rock road on The Space Between All Things, and suddenly the new album is proved to have plenty of teeth of its own. New single El Capitan, inexplicably, becomes a thumping, fist-in-the-air anthem, with some fantastic funk; the dry-witted Love Steals Us From Loneliness, a thunderously bass-heavy sing-along. It’s not until the encore that the band embellishes such memorable songs with the performance they’re renowned for, but it’s almost worth waiting for. From the force with which the tumultuous guitars firmly establish the new material amongst the old, you are forced only to conclude that the Scot rockers have still got it.