THE PROCLAIMERS
BARING THEIR TEETH
THE REID BROTHERS RETURN WITH A “DON’T BORE US, GET TO THE CHORUS” BITE ON THEIR MOST POLITICAL ALBUM TO DATE. “THE TURBULENCE OF THE TIMES ARE AT LEAST AS GREAT NOW AS THEY WERE IN THE LATE 60S OR EARLY 80S” THEY TELL US…
IAN WADE
The Proclaimers are angry. Fuming, in fact. They’re mad as hell and not going to take it anymore. Despite this fact, both Craig and Charlie Reid are perfectly cheery when they catch up with Classic Pop. Instead, they’ve poured all their frustration and ire into their new studio album, Dentures Out. The twins’ 12th LP swipes at a toothless Britain in thrall to nostalgia, feckless newspaper barons, pop legends touring the Butlins circuit and gloomsome Sundays growing up with Calvinist puritanism. It’s a furious and often hilarious blast of satire and despair clocking in at just 36 minutes. Dentures Out is their most in-your-face work, which is impressive considering they’ve never knowingly shied away from speaking their mind.
After 2018’s acclaimed Angry Cyclist a lbum took Trump and Brexit to task, Dentures Out continues in a similar vein. “I think it’s probably the most political record we’ve done down the years,” reckons Craig, the chief songwriter of the 60-year-old brothers. “I mean, it wasn’t designed like that. Songs just came out the way they did. I think it’s mostly political or satire, or observation of what’s going on around us just now. It’s probably got – for the first time on a Proclaimers record – atheme running through it, which is ‘the past’. It’s certainly an anti-nostalgia record – there’s a lot of looking back.” Charlie agrees: “It’s about people constantly looking back and the idea of the world being better in the old days, of a different kind of Britain.”
A dozen albums in, the Reid brothers are still the angry young men in spirit
© All photos Simon Murphy, except where specified