My contribution to a collective 'Best Albums of the Decade' feature which is due to appear on Muso's Guide:
As tricky a question as it is, I’d say the album which has meant the most to me this decade is 100 Broken Windows by Idlewild. The album was one of my first forays away from the Oasis, Travis, Stereophonics triumvirate which clogged the early-noughties hit parade, and opened up a gateway away from chart indie.
My love for this record isn’t just fuelled by nostalgia though. Even nine years later, no other British Indie band has matched it for energy, impact and sheer listenability.
It’s easy to understand why this is regarded by so many as a seminal album. . Roddy’s lyrics might straddle the line between intelligence and nonsense, (“…and Gertrude Stein said that’s enough!”) but that doesn’t matter at all, because 100 Broken Windows is powered along by incendiary (and bloody catchy) guitar riffs, and resonates with a glorious and barely contained rage.
100 Broken Windows marked Idlewild’s first steps from raggy-arsed punk slashers into something a little more refined. They might eventually have gone too far down the road to maturity, but at this stage Idlewild were still one of the most exciting bands in the world.
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