The Proclaimers, Let's Hear It For The Dogs (Cooking Vinyl)
They really are quite unique, The Proclaimers. True, there is nothing musically startling about this, their tenth studio album. With Dave Eringa (who has worked with the Manic Street Preachers and on the Wilko Johnson and Roger Daltrey disc) in the producer's chair at Rockfield studios in Wales, Craig and Charlie's band has a classic rock sound, even when the song (like ode to fatherhood Ten Tiny Fingers) has a country feel or harks back to the duo's Stax soul roots, as a few tracks here do. It is the lyrics that can be startling - witty and clever and impossible to imagine coming from another pen. The Dexys-ish Forever Young quotes Barry White alongside the boast "I'm not a debauched old roue", which still leaves the accusation hanging in the air, while The Other Side (of me) confesses to an ability to reduce women to tears. The shortest of the 13 tracks, Then Again, is a remarkably jaunty consideration of sexual abuse in 70s television studios and predatory MPs in childrens' homes that could only be by The Proclaimers. The dogs-versus-humans line that gives the album its title, from the song What School?, which slams bigotry in the West of Scotland, is rather more obscure in meaning, but where else will you find Kissinger and Talleyrand lining up alongside Jimmy Savile in a critique of the ills of contemporary society?
Keith Bruce
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