The Proclaimers.

Alhambra, Dunfermline, November 15

The Proclaimers are that rare kind of band who exist with one foot in the nostalgia act circuit, and one firmly placed in the land of the current, relevant and still actively adored by armies of fans. Ask most people in the street to name one of their songs and they’ll most likely look back to warm memories of big hits like Letter From America, I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles) and Sunshine on Leith, all of which landed in the late 1980s.

Yet any band trading on their past reputation alone would be unlikely to play a tour of roughly 60 dates across the UK and Canada in the second half of this year, which takes in sold out gigs at the London Palladium, the Edinburgh Playhouse and the Glasgow Academy (two each at the latter).

Craig and Charlie Reid also remain prolific recording artists, and they arrive in Fife – a few miles from their childhood home in Auchtermuchty, with dates in Perth and Dundee still to come – on the back of their 11th album, Angry Cyclist.

Their last five long-players have made it into the UK top 40, and Angry Cyclist has been their most successful since 2007’s Life With You, breaking into the top 20.

As is usual for the Proclaimers, the new album manages to make some astute political comment wrapped up in sweet and poppy choruses with a hint of the brothers’ country influence about them. The song Angry Cyclist itself uses the image of the title character stuck in traffic as a metaphor for a person surrounded and assailed by the politics of 2018, for example. The brothers are vocal supporters of Scottish Independence and opponents of Brexit.

“It’s a representation of the culture,” said Charlie in an interview earlier in this tour. “It’s all very adversarial, people shouting at each other rather than talking.”

Elsewhere on the album, the single Streets of Edinburgh is a love letter to the city where the pair live, and where their song Sunshine on Leith remains a striking football anthem to fans of Hibs; it was voted the nation’s favourite football song in a BBC poll earlier this year.

Their cult success continues unabated in other ways – from the stage and film versions of Sunshine on Leith, the musical based on their songs, and their appeal to a whole new generation through I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)’s appearance in an Ice Age film. With this tour selling 30,000 tickets across Scotland in its first hour on sale, as this one reportedly did, that continuing success doesn’t look likely to fade any time soon.

The duo’s tour continues on into December, also calling at Perth Concert Hall on November 22 and ending at the Caird Hall, Dundee on December 15.

www.proclaimers.co.uk

Craig and Charlie Reid, The Proclaimers, are on a 60-date tour across the UK and Canada.