Distraction... Video Alphabet "I"

Wow... I'm not even halfway yet! I admit I thought originally to do one band/video per letter, but I couldn't make up my mind to settle on just one. So instead it was easier to create a lot more hard work for myself and post 4-6 videos a letter.

At least people are checking out this effort, so it's worthwhile for sure!

I is for Idlewild - "Love Steals Us From Loneliness"



I would also rather have hope than sadness, if only that was easier to do.

I is for Inspiral Carpets - "This Is How It Feels"



I used this version of the video, but there's apparently another one out there that I had never seen until I was looking the band up on youtube this morning. I went with the one I remembered here. BTW, it's amazing how many good bands like these guys have come out of Manchester, England. I could do a week's worth of posts just on Manchester bands sometime.

I is for Interpol - "PDA"



I remember hearing this band for the first time in early 2002 and thinking to myself, "Now here's a band that really wears a love of Joy Division on their sleeves". I think they are more than that, of course, but I think those elements were really there, especially on their album, Turn on the Bright Lights.

I is for Ivy - "I've Got A Feeling"



This was one of my favourite bands around the mid/late 90s, and fortunately they're still around unlike many other bands from that time. They're a good band to listen to especially this time of year. This is "bright" music for me.

Affection... Bands from Scotland Part 3

There's some songs that you hear them and they just strike a chord inside that resonates with you always. "American English" by Idlewild is one of those songs for me. Formed in Edinburgh in late 1995, the band's been through numerous label changes and a few personal changes, but they've still managed to mostly keep it together as a band with their last release being in 2007. Frontman Roddy Woomble did put out a solo album in 2006, but the band remains -Woomble and all.

I'll admit their debut 1999 album, Hope Is Important, didn't impress me. It was too America grunge in sound for a Scottish band for my tastes. Their next effort, 100 Broken Windows, was a step in a better direction for my tastes so I was kind of trying to pay attention to them at that point. But then in 2002, this perfect gem of an album arrives on our fine shores in the form of the album, The Remote Part. Idlewild were kind of quiet for a few years, but here I discovered they had metamorphosed into a band with a mature sense of their own artistic ambitions. Their experiences as young musicians planted each seed they needed to grow on, and the harvest that came not even ten years later yielded a powerful crop of songs that drove this incredible disc! There's a number of great albums that will always stand out in my mind from the summer of 2002, because it was my first summer back behind the counter at a record store, but this will always be remembered as one of the best. So many solid tracks, so many wonderfully urgent lyrics.

So here's the most rousing track of the 11 songs on The Remote Part, and probably the largest assemblage of white Christmas lights you'll ever see in a music video:

"American English" by Idlewild:



I think "I'm old without knowing anything's true"...