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: If the Beatles were an experimental project designed by EMI to demonstrate to the world the possibilities of their new recording technology then they got the idea from Bach. These preludes and fugues, one of each in every key, were essentially designed to illustrate the expressive range that could be achieved using the evolving equal temperament. The Well-Tempered Clavier is basically The White Album of the classical canon. Every piece is simply a different method of demonstrating the enormous possibilities that current technology and notation could offer the performer and composer. The fact that Bach was a genius and incapable of applying himself to anything without producing something of beauty means it remains the greatest pop album ever made nearly 300 years later. It is so melodically inventive and sublime you couldn’t even fuck it up if you got Bono to write words for it.
Video after the jump.
