November 4, 1998

Aberdeen Glow 303

To say they are furkang broilient is to spell it wrong because you're too busy moshing to write coherent notes. ..

When you stagedive you see shapes. Fountain sprays of bone and spittle as rapturous faces smash against the walls and bounce back, still cackling. Blurred human missiles hurtling overhead on kamikaze missions to demolish the monitors with their heads. A spew of fluttering shorthand as a pack of blood-hungry Celtic savages descend on a soft southern NME hack, tear his notepad to shreds and offer him up as a sacrifice to The Mighty Idlewild with the words, 'THIS IS FOR GOMEZ' etched across his chest. What's more, he bleedin' loves it.

HANG BLOODY WELL ON! It's 1998, isn't it? The year when The Next Big Thing can be Mercury Award winners and gracing the cover of your granddad's favourite music mag within six months, so indistinguishable are they from The Dull Old Thing. The year when you can be ejected from gigs for failing to adopt the ubiquitous arms-folded-chin-caressed stance by the bar while saying, "Hmmm, very '94, but have you heard the new Mercury Rev?" The year when string sections are the new feedback and THE MONTROSE AVENUE are allowed to walk the streets unmolested. Hey kids, let's mellow...

Well, fuck you and the forthcoming VERVE B-side compilation you rode in on. Because tonight, 300 slavering Aberdeenites, exhausted from trying to find some merit in STEREOPHONICS, are thrashing about like their synapses are wired direct to the strobe.

Back in January, IDLEWILD were the chihuahua of rock, cute and frisky in small doses but ultimately begging to be booted into oncoming traffic. Now Roddy Woomble's small-yappy-type-dog vocals have ballooned into the roar of a he-wolf with nasal problems and Idlewild have bounded out as poonk rawk Alsatians chewing at the rotting jugular of '90s guitar music. And you share their excitement as RODDY sings, "I'd rather these were not my words" with a smirk and "I am a message" with iron conviction.

To say they are furkang broilient is to spell it wrong because you're too busy moshing to write coherent notes. 'Annihilate Now!' is the only four-minute warning you'd endure a thermonuclear winter to listen to, while 'Everyone Says That You're So Fragile' and 'Captain', if you'll pardon our metaphorical French, shit molten magnificence.

Dispatches From The Moshpit At The End Of Rock over and out. They're playing 'Last Night I Missed All The Fireworks' and I'm going back in. I may be some time.