100 BROKEN WINDOWS

Idlewild (album)

Be surprised. Every word I said the last time I reviewed an Idlewild release I now rescind gladly. Seems one hell of a U-turn, doesn't it? Well, one factor in all of this would be the fact that it wasn't one of my better or more balanced reviews (no kidding), so I wanted to give them another chance to see what they're really about. Another, slightly more important, factor would be the small matter of this album being very impressive. A couple of weeks ago I heard Actually It's Darkness and trashed it outright. You see, that's the difference between hearing something and listening to it. This time I listened to what Roddy Woomble (formerly Angry Bloke) was singing and stone me if he wasn't telling a story (not just "I love you - you love me - life's really great isn't it", no, he's put some thought into this). Little things like that can make you see a song in a whole new light. As for the rest of the album, well, it rocks. Big style. But it's a tuneful rock, which is fine by me. Your parents won't like it, but frankly, who cares? For songs like Little Discourage (the highlight) and These Wooden Ideas alone, Idlewild deserve all the praise they're getting from the music world. Think Brotherhood-era New Order teaming up with a caffeine-crazed REM and you get the general picture. Now chaps, don't get complacent and the next album could very well be a masterpiece. This isn't quite there (all-out rock isn't what I usually listen to), but by God it's close.

I WANNA LOVE YOU FOREVER

Jessica Simpson

Oh. My. Goodness. I'm sorry to report that the power ballad has not only survived the threat of the Millennium Bug, but it's got bigger and blander than ever before. This is thoroughly dreadful. If I asked you to merge together Celine Dion and Mariah Carey's ballads, this would be the result and what a sad little rump it is too. Poor Jessica, she's gone for it, really she has, but there's nothing here even remotely capable of raising this dross above the other cigarette-lighters-aloft lung-capacity-testing songs that are already out there. Please avoid this at all costs, if it makes the Top 40 it'll only encourage them.