Idlewild Review

By this point they were making solo material and putting it in the same package, and the film obligation made that worse rather than better. The period setting produces some real invention, ragtime pianos and brass arrangements handled with obvious affection, and when it lands it is charming. Mighty O has energy. Morris Brown is a genuinely lovely marching band record.

Idlewild Blue is the best thing here, a harmonica led blues that suggests a whole album nobody made. Around those, twenty two tracks of interludes, half songs and material clearly written to fill a scene, and the two of them appear together almost never. Nothing on it is offensive and the whole thing sags under obligation. It came out to polite reviews, sold modestly by their standards, and effectively closed the group. A quiet, unnecessary ending to a spectacular run.