Roddy Woomble - My Secret Is My Silence

year 2006 review: The album's title and pastoral cover image are the first signs that Idlewild's Roddy Woomble has gone folk. And yes, a majority of My Secret Is My Silence sees Woomble operating in an acoustic folk vein and even recruiting the sweet-voiced folkie Kate Rusby to handle background vocals, harmonies, and occasional female counterpoints. But Woomble heading into pastures and fields shouldn't be a surprise. While Idlewild started out as a furious, messy indie rock band, Warnings/Promises, the group's most recent effort before this solo outing, sometimes skewed resolutely toward R.E.M.'s more jangly moments. Other than the somewhat out-of-place instrumental flute-fest "Whiskeyface," My Secret Is My Silence drifts between two poles. There are pensive, brittle ballads like the gorgeous, lilting "If I Could Name Any Name" and the introspective "I Came from the Mountain" on one hand, and on the other hand midtempo to urgent storming tracks indistinguishable from Idlewild fare other than the presence of fiddles and folksy percussion in the place of electric guitars and distortion pedals.