Del Amitri singer’s ‘hooks amid gloom’
JUSTIN Currie – Del Amitri’s frontman – comes to Liverpool on his UK tour on May 31.
This Is My Kingdom Now is his latest record and he is supporting the release with this headline UK tour with his band, The Pallbearers.
After 22 years with the moderately successful pop/rock outfit Del Amitri, Justin Currie made the rash decision to go it alone in 2003, spending the next four years messing about writing, drinking and doing any weird non-rock gig he was invited to participate in.
In 2008 he finally pulled his finger out and pushed the button on a solo career with the release of his masterpiece of maudlin, What Is Love For.
The question mark was missing, perhaps denoting an answer reached: “The future is miserable and I shall sing it.”
His fourth album of this series, This Is My Kingdom Now, follows on from follow-ups The Great War (2010) and Lower Reaches (2013).
The pop sensibility of Del Amitri’s sprightly hits was largely missing from this solo oeuvre, replaced by a tone Currie himself describes as “suicide in a saucy shirt”.
Over time, audiences have begun to divine hit-type hooks buried within the gloom and now flock to hear epics such as No, Surrender, If I Ever Loved You and Falsetto with an alacrity some find surprising in an age where distraction from modernity’s inferno is a kind of medical emergency.
The gig will take place at Hanger 34 next Wednesday, May 31.
For tickets and details go to www.ticketquarter. co.uk/Online/