It has been 24 years since a 19-year-old Roddy Woomble met drummer Colin Newton at a party in Edinburgh and decided it would be a good idea to form a band.

Two years later and with a reputation for chaotic live shows, they dropped a stunning debut album Hope Is Important, recorded in just four weeks. It spawned their first chart hit, When I Argue I See Shapes.

After taking a more sweeping, melodic turn, four top 30 albums followed and in 2009, they released the crowd-funded sixth studio album Post Electric Blues which only just crept into the Top 100 UK Albums chart. By the end of the following year, the band embarked upon an "indefinite hiatus" after touring commitments ceased.

After a six year hiatus their seventh full-length studio album Everything Ever Written reached the top 20 and was the first to feature keyboardist Luciano Rossi and guitarist and bassist Andrew Mitchell.

The week that Everything Ever Written was released, the band wree already back at the drawing board to start work on the forthcoming album Interview Music, which is pencilled for release on April 5.

At the end of a US tour in 2016 they went to Los Angeles to flesh out their ideas, but it would be some years before they set themselves up at Jones’ own Edinburgh studio to finish the record.

“A lot of the songs are about dreams and dreaming and the thoughts and ideas that come from this state,” says Woomble. "I live in the Scottish Highlands, and between there and California you’ve got two locations that can put you in a dream like state – driving down Sunset Boulevard as the sun sets or driving over the remote Ardnamurchan peninsula as the sun rises. The world seems unreal, magical. You’re dreaming through a landscape.”

Before finishing the album, the band performed a run of shows to celebrate the anniversary of their third album, The Remote Part.

One of those shows would see them meet up once again with the producer of that record and their second LP 100 Broken Windows.

The band say Dave Eringa would provide Idlewild with the grounding they needed to finish Interview Music.

“Dave produced five songs on the album, but also brought a focus back to the band, and actually made us finish it!” admits Woomble “He made it sound like us."

Not that the first album tease, and album opener Dream Variations bares any comparison to the fire of their early material. It is an elaborate piano rock-tinged curio.

The promotion says that the album has the indie-rock DNA of the band, but mutated in new and strange ways. ‘ “What’s really important about Idlewild is that we are basically punk rock kids,” says Woomble. “No one ever taught us how to play anything.

"We formed a band and we learned. In our own way. We were inspired by the bands we saw just getting up on stage, making a noise and exchanging ideas, and trying to change your ideas. That’s principally what the band still do. I’m not a kid rolling around screaming into a microphone on the floor anymore, but that ideal is still at our core.”

Tracklisting: 1. Dream Variations 2. There’s A Place For Everything 3. Interview Music 4. All These Words 5. You Wear It Second Hand 6. Same Things Twice 7. I Almost Didn’t Notice 8. Miracles 9. Mount Analogue 10. Forever New 11. Bad Logic 12. Familiar To Ignore 13. Lake Martinez