REVIEW: Del Amitri, Some Other Sucker's Parade (A&M)

- Bob Gajarsky

Glasgow's Del Amitri has returned to their familiar landscape of pop music on their fifth album, Some Other Sucker's Parade.

Although 1995's Twisted included the big hit "Roll To Me", its inconsistency yielded less than satisfactory results. Some Other Sucker's Parade reverts back to the formula used on "Always The Last To Know" - saracstic lyrics and straight-ahead hooks - to keep the listener's attention throughout this 14 song effort.

The best example of these hooks comes on the first Byrds-like single "Not Where It's At". The singer doesn't get the girl (do pop singers ever?), because he's not hip enough or in the right scene. This could be the story of Del Amitri's career - pop music's critical popularity has been waning throughout the course of their album, but the Scottish group has remained true to their musical beliefs.

Any band that claims to play pop music will inevitably point towards the Beatles as influences, and cuts such as "Mother Nature's Writing" and "Cruel Light of Day" (circa "She's So Heavy") verify this statement. And speaking of the lads from Liverpool, the latest so-called fifth Beatle, Jeff Lynne, could almost be singing on the sarcastic "High Times", which mocks the hippie movement and all associated with it.

"I loathe this neo-hippie revival of mysticism," says lead singer Justin Currie. "I believe the world's problems can only be solved by people getting off their asses and doing some work; the original hippie movement was about action as much as it was about introspection."

It doesn't take much thought to determine the target audience for this release. Fans of Teenage Fanclub and their ilk, or the classic groups such as the Byrds and the Beatles, should take part in this parade.