The Scottish pop-rock band Del Amitri spent its first chapter scoring five U.K. Top 10 albums and selling 6 million copies between 1980 and 2002.
The duo, Justin Currie and Iain Harvie, went their separate ways when interest in the “Roll with Me” band waned.
In 2013, things changed. A promoter “started sniffing around,” Currie says, so Del Amitri booked a comeback tour in 2014.
“We really, really enjoyed it,” Currie says via Zoom. “We absolutely loved it. Then we did another tour in 2018. This time, we started thinking about writing new songs.
“We had maybe written 20 new songs at that point. An album was just inevitable, really.”
The result is 2021’s “Fatal Mistakes,” its first album since 2002’s “Can You Do Me Good?” Del Amitri is touring for the first time in 25 years, and the itinerary includes a Sunday, March 27, gig at the Crescent Ballroom in Phoenix.
“Fatal Mistakes” continues the Del Amitri legacy of blending ballads, such as “Driving with the Brakes On,” and protest songs, like “Stone Cold Sober.” Currie calls “Fatal Mistakes” fun.
“I do think that is true of anything we’ve ever done before,” he says. “In the ’90s, as always, there was quite a lot of pressure either from the record company or just pressure that we put on ourselves to make albums that sound standard and accessible.”
Currie says, to him, writing is very difficult because, for the last 13 years, he has been penning songs for his solo records. So, he rented a house on the Isle of Lewis.
“Once we decided who we were going to ask to play on the record, it became a lot easier because, in your mind’s eye, you can picture who the players are. You can imagine what they’re going to do with thing. It got a bit easier.”
Currie and Harvie considered Del Amitri’s sound during this time, which was harder than they thought.
“We had to write a lot of songs for it because about 50% of the songs we wrote for it didn’t sound sufficiently like us,” he says.
“It probably wouldn’t have happened if we hadn’t done solo albums in the interim. You kind of develop and evolve. Because we’ve been away for so long, we didn’t want to. We didn’t want to do something that was quite different sounding without showing all those steps along the way.
“So we went back to the basics — just two guitars, bass and drums — and said, ‘Let’s do it that way.’ It worked.”
Del Amitri w/Kris Dollimore
WHEN: 7:30 p.m. Sunday, March 27
WHERE: Crescent Ballroom, 308 N. Second Avenue, Phoenix
COST: $29.50; plus vaccination card or proof of negative test
INFO: 602.716.2222, crescentphx.com
