Ever since The Proclaimers first toured Australia in 1989, their local following has remained loyal, resulting in half a dozen subsequent visits.
This month they’ll take the stage at the Sydney Opera House and several similarly revered venues around the country. Nearly 30 years after their international breakthrough, vocalist Craig Reid values the band’s ongoing popularity.
“As the years go by, I think it kind of matters more,” he says. “When you’re young, you don’t really think about it. Even if you’re playing a place that’s a bit scuzzy, you think, ‘Oh, this is great,’ and whatever. But as you get older, I think you appreciate it when you play those places, and the fact there’s still an audience there to see you. We certainly don’t ever take it for granted. I think we did 68 shows last year, I think we’re doing more this year – I think we’re doing over 80 shows this year. So it’s very busy and we’re pleased there’s still an audience there for us.”
This visit comes off the back of last year’s Let’s Hear It For The Dogs – the tenth LP written by Craig and his brother Charlie since they formed the band in the early 1980s. The Scottish duo’s major breakthrough came with their second LP, 1988’s Sunshine On Leith, which featured the global mega-hit ‘I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)’. Lots has happened in the music world in the ensuing years – we’ve experienced an electronic music revolution, several evolutions in hip hop and a general relaxation of genre boundaries, aided by the accessibility offered by the internet. The Reid brothers feel no urge to assimilate, but they’re not oblivious to the context into which they’re releasing music.
“I think you should keep up with what’s going on,” says Craig. “Charlie and I are 54 and you don’t get the same thing about music when you’re 54 as when you’re 14 or 24. I try and listen to the radio and I try and keep up with what’s going on, but I’m at the stage where I’d rather be writing stuff and playing it than listening to someone else. I think music makes the most impact on people in their teens and in their 20s. As you get older, the music you hear in your teens and your early 20s is the stuff that stays with you.
“The internet has revolutionised the way that people put music out and the way they receive it, but for us it’s still about writing a song and then the two of us getting together and playing it with a piano or with a guitar just over and over again until it’s sitting right. We make the demos that way – just two voices and the guitar.”
Despite the simplicity of this method, Let’s Hear It For The Dogs is a stylistically varied album. Across 13 tracks, The Proclaimers touch on conventional folk and baroque balladry as well as Scott Walker-like chamber pop and amped-up rock’n’roll.
“I think most of the songs kind of suggested the arrangements that they have,” Reid says. “Dave Eringa, who produced the record, I think there was only one song that he actually changed the arrangement. We did the demos, Charlie and I, and then we gave the demos to the band and let them have them for a month, and then we went into the rehearsal room and spent a week with the band going through all the songs and getting the arrangements. Then Dave came up the following week and he changed maybe one song around a bit. Then we went straight down to Wales and recorded the album over the space of two weeks. So the songs didn’t change too much from the demos to the actual recordings, other than there’s more musicians on them.
“When I’m writing songs, I just try to forget I’ve ever written a song before, put everything out my mind and just go with my instincts,” says Reid. “That seems to work. You’re really just trying to get the feeling of the song over on records, and you don’t meddle with it and let the production get in the way too much.”
Lyrics are central to The Proclaimers’ appeal, as well as the Reids’ raw, personable and distinctly Scottish voices. Although Craig attempts to ignore all his previous achievements when working on new material, the fact of the matter is he’s written hundreds of songs. One wonders if he’s ever concerned about running out of lyrical ideas.
“I think if we run out of things to write about, we’ll just give up. I occasionally think about that, and I actually think no – I don’t think it’ll happen. Both Charlie and I have always been interested in writing songs about really varied subjects. We’ve written political songs and love songs, but if we can find a subject we haven’t heard used very often, then we’re interested in doing it.
“When it comes to the lyrics, generally I don’t know what a song’s going to be about. Most of the time – nine times out of ten – I’ll get a completed tune first, and I won’t know what it’s about until I’ve got the first two, three lines down. Sometimes you get the lyrics first, but most times it is the music. So I don’t fear that. If you get to the stage where you’re just not writing stuff that you’re interested in, then it’s best to stop.”
[The Proclaimers photo by Murdo Macleod]
Playing the Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House, Saturday April 16, The Proclaimers have a new album out, Let’s Hear It For The Dogs available through Cooking Vinyl.
