Nearly 40 years into their career, folk-rock legends the Proclaimers, AKA Scottish twins Craig and Charlie Reid, return in September with their 12th album, Dentures Out. Continuing their history of tackling political issues – 1988’s breakthrough album, Sunshine on Leith, featured songs outlining their stance on Scottish nationalism – it’s a record that touches on everything from the weaponising of nostalgia to the bubble of modern life. Recorded in Wales and produced by long-term Manic Street Preachers producer Dave Eringa, it features that band’s James Dean Bradfield on a handful of tracks.
Dentures Out should continue the Reid twins’ recent creative and commercial success, with each of their last five albums landing inside the UK Top 40 and Scottish Top 5. Known to most people as the bespectacled hitmakers behind 1987’s Letter from America and, of course, 1988’s wedding reception favourite I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles), the pair have chalked up hits in the UK, Australia and the US – where I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles) belatedly peaked at No 3 after appearing in 1993 romcom, Benny & Joon. Its longevity was also assisted by a Comic Relief version that hit No 1 in the UK in 2007.
But it’s a song that has overshadowed the rest of the Proclaimers’ career, one that’s taken almost as many twists and turns as that 500-mile journey. Influenced by folk, punk, country, alt-rock and roots rock, they’ve toured with everyone from the B-52s to Bon Jovi, worked with Edwyn Collins and Kevin Rowland, covered the Temptations for the soundtrack to Dumb and Dumber, and inspired a hugely successful stage musical, 2007’s Sunshine on Leith, which was turned into a feature film six years later.
If you’re keen to ask them about any of the above then please leave your questions below by 28 August. Or maybe instead you’d like to grill them on their knowledge of Hibernian FC? Get fashion tips about their preferred choice of top-notch eyewear? Or perhaps you’d like to know where they disappeared to in the late 90s, given the seven-year gap between 1994’s Hit the Highway and 2001’s aptly-titled Persevere?
