A PROCLAMATION

Charlie Reid from The Proclaimers talks touring, Kanye West, the decline of Britain, and their most political album yet

By Bridget Macarthur

“I’m in Edinburgh so it’s pretty cold here. There’s snow forecast in the next two hours. A bit of a contrast to where you are I suspect.” I look out the window. It’s 7⁰ and raining in Melbourne, as it has been almost every day for a week. Not such a contrast after all. I’m speaking with Charlie Reid – one half of the beloved pop duo, The Proclaimers – and thinking about how similar Australia, in fact, is to Scotland. Putting aside the nearconstant rain we’re having across many parts of the country at the moment, we’re both constitutional monarchies forever toying with the idea of a republic; we both claim AC/DC as our own; we both have a city called Perth… And we both adore The Proclaimers. “I would say it’s our most successful country,” Reid tells me. “It’s all good memories for us there. On our first trip over, I think we played the biggest halls we’d ever played up to that point. We also played the Rugby World Cup [at the closing party in Perth] the year that England won and defeated Australia in the final… It’s always a great country to tour… and we’re doing several different types of shows this time, from theatres to WOMADelaide.” This February will see them back for umpteenth time (they’ve been here so often I literally couldn’t track down the exact number) since first touring the country in 1989 – the year ‘I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)’ hit #1 in Australia for five weeks running. Reid is particularly thrilled to be back on the road after a longer than usual layoff for the seemingly constantly touring band thanks to COVID-19. He’s just finished up a 35-date tour of the UK and Ireland with bandmate and twin brother Craig Reid, and their four-piece backing band, kicking off a 14-month world tour. “We’re getting older. I mean, we turn 60 In March, so I’m really glad we got back to it this year. I wouldn’t want to go on any longer without doing a live show. The relief getting back to it this summer was very palpable among the team.” Of course, some things have changed over the years when it comes to touring. “I don’t want to be in the back of a transit van anymore. We get hotel every night, now – that’s a new thing for us.” But despite being a few years older, they’re far from getting sick of pulling out the classics on stage. In fact, they’re a band known for their lack of ego on stage, and willingness to embrace the tracks that made them world famous – ‘I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles’), ‘Sunshine on Leith’, ‘Letter from America’, and ‘I’m On My Way’ (aka ‘that song from Shrek’) “They keep us on the road! Particularly ‘500 Mile’s. We’ve been very lucky, so it would be very foolish of us – and arrogant, I think – to dismiss that. You want to please people. You want to get out there and entertain. So, to play that song and get the crowd reaction makes us happy too.” In addition to the hits, plus other favourites from their more than 30-year career, they’ll be giving several new songs off their latest album, Dentures Out, their Australian debut. Reid calls the album, recorded at the legendary Rockfield Studios in Wales with producer Dave Eringa and released in September, “the most overtly political record we’ve done in 20 years, easily, maybe more.” And it’s true – their twelfth album goes in hard. While their (extensive) website bio might say that “their songs feature at weddings, funerals and everything in-between”, Dentures Out feels more like it belongs as the soundtrack to an end-of-days, nihilistic jig – the world’s funeral, perhaps. But for any die-hard fans out there looking for a wedding song with a bit of an edge, Reid would have to recommend the title track – ‘Dentures Out’ – one of two tracks on the album to feature the inimitable James Dean Bradfield of Manic Street Preachers on guitar). “And ‘Sundays by John Calvin’ for a funeral,” he adds. “A humorous look at my childhood, rather than my death.” It also happens to be one of his favourite tracks to play live, along with ‘Feast Your Eyes’. “They’re both lockdown songs without mentioning lockdown, if you know what I mean. We just make somewhat oblique reference to it.” Not a band to shy away from the fact of their own aging, the album’s title is, to some degree, self-mocking, as they both approach their seventh decade of life in lockstep. But it’s a lot more about the political and cultural decline of Britain, and the West more broadly. “It’s strange that the record came out within a couple of days of the Queen dying, you know, and you just felt that an age has passed… Not that I mourn it particularly, but it was interesting… Whatever one’s feelings towards the monarchy, the queen had a degree of respect, even among republicans like me, for her toughness and stoicism. I don’t think her son is going to have anything like that, despite having the longest apprenticeship in British history… I’d abolish [the monarchy] tomorrow to be honest… and I’ll be surprised if there aren’t several more Commonwealth nations moving towards becoming republics in the next five or 10 years.” But such change requires voices of dissent, like Reid’s, and he worries that many bands are taking the opposite route to The Proclaimers, returning to what he calls a “pre-Beatles” England where there was a “strong element of manufacture”, compared with the originality of the 70s and 80s. “There’s still great, original talent now, obviously – like the Arctic Monkeys – but I don’t know where the politics went, and that’s a bit depressing... I think the talent show thing probably changed everything in that the Simon Cowell type people got a lot more power, and record companies had stuff thrown in their laps that they knew would sell, so they just went with that. “But honestly, with all the stuff that’s going on, it seems very, very strange to me not to comment… I don’t think everybody should be political all the time, but it’s hard to fathom how you can live in the world as it is in the 21st century, and not be aware of the changes and the dangers that are there – be it to the planet, or in the case of war, or famine – and for that not to come out in your work somehow. Like, in the last few weeks, looking at Kanye West, spouting antisemitism and fascism on the basis of free speech. He’s gone off to Planet Zog, with his pal Donald Trump. I always find Americans bizarre to some degree, but Kanye West is really taking the biscuit. He’s something else, as the Americans would say… It’s a kind of strange world we’re living in, if you know what I mean… So much of it is depressing. But you can’t run away. You’ve got to face it… And that comes through in what we do.”

He pauses, adding: “Perhaps older bands, like us, are less concerned about selling records, because they know they’re not going to sell many, so they can just do and say what they think – if they still have an audience.” While there is certainly a young community of musicians out there singing about climate change and social upheaval, especially on the post-punk scene, it’s true that many bands of a similar age to The Proclaimers (in Scotland in particular), no matter the genre, seem to have moved into a twilight of unbarred, streamof-consciousness-style social commentary. Brand new works are being released that are consistently being called these multi-decadeold bands’ most political yet – from Del Amitri’s 2021 album Fatal Mistakes, to Arab Strap’s track ‘Fable of the Urban Fox’. “I also think it’s in the water here [in Scotland]. It’s in the drinking water. It’s a cultural thing. And it’s stronger here than it is in England and much much stronger than the United States of America… Maybe that’s what happens when you’re in bed with an elephant, as someone once said – it’s that proximity to a much larger power.” And, according to Reid, it’s at the beating heart of what The Proclaimers is as a band – claiming their genre not as pop, folk, punk, new-wave, or any specific combination of those things, but “humorous social commentary”. “On this album in particular, it just kind of poured out. Lyrically, most of it comes from Craig. But we both write the same way in that we just don’t think about it – that’s the point. You can be at least a verse and a chorus in before you know what the hell the song is about.” Of course, such poignant socio-political sentiment can be a heavy burden to carry when you’re performing night after night, trying to do every song justice, to embody the meaning of every lyric. “We’ve given ourselves a few more years… but there will come a point that, if we feel that we’re not, giving the performance we want to give, we’ll quit doing live shows – because I think Craig and I both have high standards for ourselves in terms of being able to perform. I think as long as you’re fit enough, you should probably carry on. And as long as there’s an audience that wants to see you... But the minute you don’t feel that you’re projecting the songs properly, then I think it’s time.” Lucky for us, he reckons The Proclaimers have got at least one more Aussie tour in them, on top of 2023. “It is addictive – one because you’re expressing your own feelings, and two because people like to come and see you. So, you feel like you’re doing it for two reasons – yourself, and the audience... And it’s just one of those things where the thought of [2023] potentially being the last time we would come would be so upsetting. I hope there’s a couple more to go.” And with so much political turmoil of our own here, and Australia’s broader similarities to Scotland, maybe we can even expect a track or two popping up on an album down the line dedicated to their cousins down south. “Maybe! If you’ve got any sense, you tend to try to keep your mind as open as possible. Travelling to places or new people that you meet; I think you’ve got to be open to it and soaking everything up as much as you can… It’s definitely an interesting time to look at the world, the geopolitics of the world, and how fast things are changing. Whether we like it or not, the West is in decline proportionately to the rest, so it’s gonna be an interesting few years

The Proclaimers will be at Womadelaide and tickets for other dates in Australia are also on sale now.

“It’s gonna be an interesting few years.”