…for more, obviously. They also left me itching in a very literal sense. What is it with ageing indie fans? Are they immune to the charms of hygiene? Despite their infestations, they all had girlfriends/boyfriends too. Grrrr. Revolting, isn't it? I got home and nearly burned all my clothes before spending an hour in the bath frantically scrubbing away in case the critters survived the journey from Birmingham. The whole of Manchester's infested too: I returned from the Blog Awards with lots of bites on the ankles. I blame Fleet Foxes: they repopularised beards in the indie fraternity, and that leads to trampiness (c.f. Super Furry Animals).
Anyway, apart from that, it was a great evening. We had a fine meal at the small, older branch of Café Soya, Birmingham's finest Vietnamese restaurant, a couple of lovely ales at the Victoria then off to the new Academy (good room, unpleasant and extortionately priced beer). Downstairs, the revolting Calvin Harris attracted crowds off young attention-seekers, while upstairs we more sober and (mostly older) types congregated for some earnest rock.
Idlewild were, plainly speaking, magnificent, though they too have succumbed to the 'beard = credible' disease. The new album is a return to their early-REM fuzzy folk-rock template, but shorn of the extra performers featured on the record, they just plain rocked, striding the small stage as though they were on at Glastonbury. What really impresses me is that their songs are emotionally intelligent and literate without pretension, which is a really difficult trick to pull off. The only problem with a six-album band is that so many great tracks are excluded. Three thumbs up.
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