THE PROCLAIMERS
Dentures Out (Cooking Vinyl)
Dentures Out could quite easily be titled Knives Out. Satire against sunny melodies has been The Proclaimers’ modus operandi for 30-odd years and they don’t hold back on the excellent opening title track, or its follower The World That Was.
In conjuring up a toothless, aged Britain obsessed with its wartime/Empirical past, The Proclaimers use Dentures Out to lay waste to the hand-clapping, Keep Calm landscape of lockdown. James Dean Bradfield’s guitar cameos seem very apt.
Recorded quickly in the legendary Rockfield Studios, with all but one song clocking in at less than three minutes, this is an album heavy on themes but light on length. The vocal arrangements on Dentures Out aren’t as arresting as on 2018’s Angry Cyclist, the songs not as catchy. With so much to say it feels unfair that the music isn’t as memorable as the one-liners. But perhaps that’s the point: there’s a difference between presenting art and peddling nostalgia.
words JOHN-PAUL DAVIES