Review: The Proclaimers – Life With You
I first discovered The Proclaimers when they released a 1990 single entitled “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)” to some critical acclaim and Top 40 success (it was the #3 single in 1993). Since then, I’ve tried to keep up with them and check out their albums as they’re released. While surfing Spiralfrog.com’s library, I ran into the 2007 album “Life With You
If you’re not familiar with The Proclaimers, they’re a Scottish rock band composed of two identical twin brothers, Charlie and Craig Reid. Unlike some bands, their Scottish accents come through loud and clear in their music, as do their political views. They support Scottish independence from Britain and are politically active in that regard.
One of the things I really like about The Proclaimers is their ability to turn a phrase. Where some bands would take the cliched route in a love song and describe a woman in a red dress by comparing her to a rose or some other red object, The Proclaimers describe a pale woman in a red dress as looking like “blood lying on snow” (in the track of the same name). While I celebrate this as an interesting turn of phrase, I have to wonder how a woman would react to being described as looking like blood on snow. But this isn’t the only unusual choice of words in the song. Later, they say “It’s taken generations of lucky breeding to make you” to the woman they’re interested in. I’m not sure how many women would be swept off their feet by such phrases, but they are fun to listen to.
I found “Harness Pain” to be a very strong track. The listener is told they must harness pain if they want to hold “the flame” and “tell the truth about love”. They’re told that “when you try to succeed you mostly fail” but you harness the pain and become stronger.
“The Long Haul”, “S-O-R-R-Y”, and perhaps certain other tracks seem to take on the Iraq war and its supporters, saying “I miss the days when the threat to our position didn’t come from some religion but from godless communism.” We’re told “we’re not barbarians like we were way back when, we’ve learned from history, so we get to go around again” and “tell your sons not to bother with football, get a backpack on and crawl, we’re in this for the long haul”.
In terms of music and performance, this is as good an album as any other from The Proclaimers. However, in terms of its content, it’s a far more politically charged piece than earlier albums like Sunshine on Leith.
If you like The Proclaimers’ unique sound and can stomach their political views (whether you agree with those views or not), you’ll find this an enjoyable album and fair amount different from mainstream pop music.