On Instagram – that’s right I am down with the kids, bro – a mate of mine put up a thing with all the albums that were hitting 30 this year. It’s a staggering list.
Here’s another.
“Change Everything” wasn’t my entry point into Del Amitri – I knew “Nothing Ever Happens” (as an aside I consider it to be the finest condemnation of Thatcherism there’s ever been, these days) but it was the one that, well, changed everything, as it were.
In 1994 I was 19 years old, I’d just started work. I’d finished college and had finished the first great unrequited love affair of my life (there’s been two others) and to be honest, if your album starts thus:
“And I guess I’d better go
Before I make a grave mistake
And let my feelings show”
Then I was buying the thing.
That’s what Justin Currie sings on the first verse of its first song, “Be My Downfall” – and that thing I always say about music geeks not needing a diary, its right here. One listen to it and I am back there.
That said, it’s interesting to listen to these songs with the prism of three decades of rock n roll behind me. For as much as Currie cites the Neil Young influences, I am listening to “Just Like A Man” and thinking “man, that’s where King King got their ideas from”.
The song itself is glorious, and I listen to Del Amitri a lot, so its not like I haven’t heard these songs for 30 years, but clearly, now in my late 40s, the words to “When You Were Young” hit a little different, these days, or you find yourself wondering how much of “Surface Of The Moon” was autobiographical, and thinking about how “I Won’t Take The Blame” is basically the perfect song when you are going through the stage when it’s her fault anyway, and trying to remember how you felt back then.
What “…Everything” underlines more than anything, though, is my long held belief that if something sounds dated now, it was crap then (like Monty Python or Fawlty Towers). Simply put, if the fragile “First Rule Of Love” came out tomorrow, I’d buy it.
It’s often forgotten, I think, just how good a rock n roll band DA are. The power chords are out on “The Ones That You Love Lead You Nowhere” and it has a Thunder-ish feel, and there’s cowbell on “Always The Last To Know”, enough said? Actually, no, it needs saying just how good a track it is. The record shop I bought the single in has long gone, the song lives on. The payoff line is perfection.
And again, with the ear of me now and not me then, the US influences are clear on this. “To Last A Lifetime” or the more country “As The Tide Comes In” make it clear – to be fair that song was a soundtrack to the second unrequited love affair in the late early 2000s. The tale of a bloke who ends up at a wedding of a “friend” had resonance then…..
Mostly though “Change Everything” is just choc full of wonderful songs, like “Behind The Fool” – they nail not letting your guard down here – and there’s a sort of The Faces feel to the last one “Sometimes I Just Have To Say Your Name” and I think I knew that then, too.
If you do have to say her name, then hi, Helen.
The first of the incredible albums celebrating 30 years is right here – and it’s amongst the best of them.
Rating 9.5/10
