release date: May 3, 1988
format: cd
[album rate: 3,5 / 5] [3,66]
producer: Ben Watt
label: Blanco y Negro - nationality: England, UK
Track highlights: 1 "I Don't Want to Talk About It" - 2. "Love Is Here Where I Live" - 3. "These Early Days" - 5. "Oxford Street" - 10. "Tears All Over Town" - 11. "Lonesome for a Place I Know"
4th studio album by Everything but the Girl. It comes in at least three different versions with individual track listings. The original vinyl pressing (both British and German pressings) consisted of 11 tracks that are found here as tracks #2-12. Track #1 is something as unusual as a cover-version written and composed by Danny Whitten of Crazy Horse. On some cd issues it's enlisted as track #12.
Idlewild is luckily not just another attempt into sophist-pop but makes a return to a more simple form making it more of the natural successor to Love Not Money from 1985, thus being a much better release than the '86 album, although, the duo still seems a bit stuck in which way to choose. There are some fine jazz pop compositions, jangle pop tunes, but it also contains tracks built as symphonic sophisti-pop with funky frettless bass-lines that doesn't improve anything; however, Watt and Thorn are back as fine songwriters, and that's nice.
To me, the album comes out as the duo's second best album so far.
It's the first of only two albums by EBTG to be included in "1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die".
[ allmusic.com 4,5 / 5 stars ]
