From The Desk Of Del Amitri’s Justin Currie: “Encounters At The End Of The World”

There will always be a small bunch who will never forgive Justin Currie for the sins of his former band, Del Amitri. Namely, the speed and vigor with which the group abandoned the angular new-wave-ish promise of its 1985 self-titled debut for more conventional pop inroads. Currie makes no apologies for the 17 years and five albums of smart, well-executed, comparatively middle-of-the-road Brit Invasion melodies and country-rock yearnings that followed. It even netted him and his Scottish bandmates an American hit, “Roll To Me,” in 1995. Nowadays, Currie is still living in Glasgow while nurturing an intermittent solo career that now includes The Great War (Ryko). Coming eight years after Del Amitri’s last album, it resurrects the reassuring jangle of that band as it continues Currie’s middle-age explorations of the darker recesses of the male love muscle (i.e. the heart). Currie will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our Q&A with him.

Currie: It takes a genius of Werner Herzog‘s maverick bent to raise funding for an Antarctic cinema spectacular and make what is essentially a long essay on the impending disappearance of the human race. The scientists have given up all hope of mankind’s salvation and retreated into their particular fields with a kind of glassy-eyed gallows humour. Herzog himself is left with nothing to do but rant about his bugbears and marvel at the casual cruelty of nature. Even the fucking penguins are suicidal. Trust me, Encounters At The End Of The World is hilarious. It’s a slapstick version of The Day After Tomorrow—with science.

Video after the jump.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MImYM87jOtU