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: What is this song about? Does anybody know? Does Bill Callahan know? What I find beautiful and intriguing about this song is its visual clarity. The two viewpoints—from the bank and from the bottom of the river—seem to delineate the listener and the writer. Is the jewel that he fetches from the river bed this song he has brought to us, to his sisters, his parents? It contains something profound, and I couldn’t begin to tell you what that could possibly be. In fact, I don’t wish to know. It is perfectly lovely.
Video after the jump.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5J-WpgOzW9A
