From city life as singer in a frantic rock band to family man on a remote Scottish island, Roddy Woomble's move to Mull has left him a changed man
Roddy Woomble has never been afraid of change. As the luxuriantly fringed lead singer of the Edinburgh band Idlewild (American magazine Elle Girl once described Woomble as, and I quote, "a hunka hunk of burning love"), he oversaw their shift from teeth-shattering punk-pop extremists to a streamlined group of young fellows at home with radio-friendly melodies. As long ago as 2001, he was talking up their fourth album, The Remote Part, as "the first definitive Idlewild album" some months before they'd even begun recording it. Woomble has, or at least had, the sort of restless nature that meant he was always up on his tiptoes attempting to look over the horizon and see what's next.
In Spring 2008, after living in London and then Glasgow for much of the last decade, Woomble and his wife packed everything up and moved to Mull, off Scotland's west coast. He'd wanted to move to an island for a while ? there had been abortive attempts at buying a ruined church near Loch Ness in Invermoriston ("unmortgageable") and a croft in the remote coastal community of Sutherland ("sadly, it had a condemned septic tank"). But the change this move has brought about seems so simple and profound it appears to have made Woomble rethink how he does everything.
"Well, it is a beautiful place," he says. "We moved to Mull for the space, for the environment, but it's actually been the people that have been so important. My wife has family there. At first I knew no one at all, but the songs I've written have definitely been shaped by the people I've met. Sometimes I think it's odd how these songs came together quite quickly, then I think, well maybe it's not been quick at all, maybe it's taken me 34 years to get here and I just didn't realise it."
Woomble's new album, The Impossible Song & Other Songs, was recorded over four months in his local arts centre. It is a moving and quietly joyous collection of pieces weaving together strands of folk, jazz and country. Frankly, it sounds like the sort of record you might make if you had largely decided to turn your back on the modern world.
"I can understand that feeling," he laughs, "but, really, Mull is just where I live. I didn't move here thinking, 'Oh this'll be good for my new record!' This record's not a statement; it's fun ? a party album! There's nothing clinical or cold about it. It is introspective to a degree, but it never falls below hopeful. My first two solo albums were much more low-key than this one and they were far more rooted in traditional Scottish folk. This record is a real change ? it's more eclectic while still being part of that folk scene. I've been a bit limited before in what I did, but this is so much more free."
One of the key elements caught in the music is a sense of space, Woomble has a deep love of just "wandering around" ? indeed, he had a long-running column called On the Road in Scotland's Herald newspaper where he would do just that ? but he laughs off the suggestion that he's retreated to some blissed-out idyll, "spending every evening staring into Hebridean sunsets".
But some evenings you do, right? "Ha! Of course! Actually I stare at them quite a lot."
And when you're staring at them, do you ever think about when you were that young shaver in a wildly noisy rock'n'roll band? "Oh God, I really do," he says. "I'm proud of those records we made, but this is a different stage of my life. Now I'm happy just to write songs. I want to create melodies and words that people will really remember."
A van passes by noisily in the background, nearly drowning Woomble out. "Now I understand how music goes out into the distance," he says. "It never really ends at all, does it?"
The Impossible Song & Other Songs is released on Greenvoe on 21 March. Roddy Woomble tours the UK in March and April.
Kelly Hu Michelle Rodriguez Mena Suvari Georgina Grenville Michelle Trachtenberg
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