WHEN Scots indie rockers Idlewild first appeared at Fibbers in York a few years ago, they were an enjoyably chaotic wall of noise and feedback, with guitarist Rod Jones attacking his instrument with his teeth as often as with his plectrum, and singer Roddy Woomble wombling around and falling over a lot.

Great to watch, but what really impressed was that, by the 100 Broken Windows album, they'd secretly discovered the art of writing "proper" songs amid all the guitar bludgeoning, adding early REM to their list of influences, in that way that Scottish bands have of assimilating US underground rock, and adding their own melodic slant.

So now, after a brief absence, their ever-growing knack for epic melodies sees them, incredibly, on the verge of being this year's Coldplay or Travis, the Brit guitar band who go mainstream. In fact, the epic sweep and chiming guitars of spine-tingling big single American English even bring U2 to mind, and opener You Held The World In Your Arms IS The Smiths' Bigmouth Strikes Again, only arranged for punk band and symphony orchestra.

However, for the old-school fans, the raw, tuneful grunge rock of A Modern Way Of Letting Go and I Am What I Am Not are closer to what Idlewild are about.

It's the likeable and uncontrived confusion between their epic sentiment and accessible melodies on the one hand, and their die-hard art-school punk influences on the other that make Idlewild so appealing.

After all, you wouldn't ever catch Travis employing a poet (Edwin Morgan) to deliver a spoken word performance over a full-on feedback guitar blow-out (closing track Scottish Fiction), would you?

Updated: 10:18 Thursday, July 25, 2002