February 1995
DEL AMITRI
A&M PRESS DEPARTMENT
BIOGRAPHY
Justin Currie - Vocals, Bass
Iain Harvie -- Guitars
David Cummings -- Guitars
Andy Alston -- Keyboards
Chris Sharrock -- Drums
The unique combination of head and heart that marks the music of Del Amitri
has never been more pronounced than on TWISTED. The Scottish group's
bountiful new album -- which follows 1990's breakthrough set WAKING HOURS
and its much-lauded successor CHANGE EVERYTHING which spawned the Billboard
Top 40 hit "Always The Last To Know" -- is a further refinement of their
highly individual style, which melds catchy, hook-filled mainstream rock
with a slightly off-kilter, sometimes brooding intelligence. It is a style
that has befuddled critics looking for easy labels, but noticeably left the
band's growing legion of fans -- not nearly so genre-specific -- asking
only for more.
TWISTED is more, and then some. Choosing to find inspiration by "getting
it together in the country," Del Amitri founders Justin Currie
(vocals/bass) and lain Harvie (guitar) moved the band into a house 40 miles
south of London and practiced and arranged TWISTED as its songs were being
written. The result is a tightly arranged collection of varied-sounding
material that, for the first time in the band's career, was largely
recorded live in the studio.
"lain and I could write something," Currie recalls, "get a drum part or
rhythm guitar track, and I could go upstairs and write some lyrics or a
melody. Then I could come back downstairs and say, 'All right guys, this
is what it should sound like, and get everybody to play it. Just having
everybody in the one house meant that the songs took shape a lot faster --
and it meant the enthusiasm was always there."
Further helping shape the sound of TWISTED was producer Al Clay, whose
previous work included a stint behind the boards for Frank Black. "He
engineered a single that we did -- "Spit In The Rain," a between album
one-off after WAKING HOURS," says Currie. "He just seemed like the logical
choice. We knew he was a good bloke, and he'd just made a really
fabulous-sounding Frank Black record."
Guitarist lain Harvie, who co-wrote half of TWISTED's material with Currie,
says that the spell in the country had considerable effect on the
songwriting of his partner. "On the previous album, Justin just sort of
hid in his bedroom and wrote miserable songs," he says. "This time he
actually wrote happy songs, because we were in a nice place. It's got two
happy songs on it -- which makes it a happier record than the last one,
which had no happy songs on it. For us, that's a regular party album. "
The overall sense of artistic maturity pervading TWISTED may be partially
attributed to a band that has adjusted to its growing international
fame. Both Currie and Harvie agree that its making came much easier than
1992's CHANGE EVERYTHING. "We were a bit uptight making the last record,"
Harvie candidly recalls, "because WAKING HOURS had been much more
successful than we had expected. We put ourselves through, while not an
enormous amount of pressure, a little bit unnecessary pressure, which I
think in retrospect was not helpful."
Indeed TWISTED's 12 songs showcase an artistic growth that will be evident
to any longtime Del Amitri fan. Singer Currie notes two of which he is
particularly proud: "Being Somebody Else" ("about the closest we get to
psychedelia," he says) and "Tell Her This. "The latter, adds Currie, "was
the first thing I've ever written that just came out, and I didn't think
about. I came back to it four months later and suddenly realized it was a
good song. Both those songs sound quite new to me."
Most importantly, says Currie, TWISTED presents Del Amitri as they would
most like to be seen: a cracking rock 'n' roll band. "Obviously a lot of
our songs are quite poppy," he says, "But we always set out to make
something that sounds like a cross between Neil Young the Beatles and the
Undertones. It never ends up sounding like that -- it always ends up
sounding like a pop album, and quite bland. On this thing we set out to do
the same thing, to make a fairly lively rock 'n' roll record -- and I think
we got nearer that result. It doesn't sound like a pop album to me. I
mean, it doesn't sound like a cross between the Undertones, Beatles and
Neil Young either, but it's getting there."
With typically self-deprecating humor, Currie acknowledges that it's
unlikely that Del Amitri will ever be perceived as an act on the cutting
edge of rock. But, he says, that's fine by him. "Even though the music I
grew up listening to was, for want of a better term, alternative music --
I've always been aware that it would be a total charade or a sham to
pretend that we were anything other than straight in the middle in terms of
rock or pop music. But I think within that, there's crap and there's good
stuff. And hopefully we're the good stuff." And in a world of dizzying
demographics and shifting radio formats, where does TWISTED fit in?
"There's phrase I particularly like that's being applied to a lot of
things," he says. "Post-everything. I'd rather be post-everything than
anything else, so I'll go with that."
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