Idlewild, Other Stage, Friday 3.30pm

The thing about this band is that they could force you to go blind. Everything is organized to form such a direct bullet that you feel your head spinning when they've finished. The milder approach suggested by recent single 'You Held The World In Your Arms' is thrown aside (even when they play that song), and we are treated to a relentless noise, Roddy Woomble all casual violence and the band throwing a wall of insistent drum fills and their best Wedding Present guitar riffs at us. The world (well, some of it) is expecting an album full of lush acoustic pop songs from Idlewild this time, but on this evidence, they've lost none of the bite they'd found in simple melodies and well-constructed sing-alongs played at extreme volumes. I've heard the word 'Smiths' bandied about in relation to them recently, but this is more Stooges than Strangeways. Playing it perfectly safe (a classic or two, the new single, one 'from the new record', then an old faithful again), it has to be said that there is a much better response for the ones you can shout to, but the new material is played with such conviction that you can't help but feel the new ones now will be shouted along to at next year's festival. Idlewild are staunchly reliable. You know what you're going to get, and you get it in droves, but that's exactly what we want from them. As the closing 'Roseability' informs us, "I know that that's not enough now." A field of people seem to agree. Looks like Gertrude Stein was wrong this time. David Something