Justin Currie

This Is My Kingdom Now

Endless Shipwreck

A FORTNIGHT today, Justin Currie will make his debut at Perth Festival of the Arts, an event to which his father used to contribute a new opera production each year. Since launching a post-Del Amitri solo career a decade ago, Currie junior has essayed just about every sort of music bar opera, but his fourth solo album follows those he made for Rykodisc and 2013's Lower Reaches with another collection of slightly maudlin Americana, songs about omnipotence and self-obsession that reward rather closer listening that the Dels' pop hits demanded.

A couple of them, and notably I Love The Sea, which is one of the standouts, were giving an airing in Paisley Abbey when Currie was the latest collaborator with the RSNO at The Spree. On the album it boasts some very ear-catching guitar work, but such high profile contributions to the production by his sidemen are spare – the trumpet solo on the title track being another. Those two tracks are examples of recordings where he indulges a temptation towards the epic, while others are more highly polished miniatures, with Sydney Harbour Bridge and Crybabies being examples of those. There is a line in the latter that even nods towards his father's choral work, if I am not mistaken.

Keith Bruce