Sunshine On Leith
The ProclaimersLeith is the port adjacent to the city of Edinburgh where the Reid twins were born and signed on the dole after leaving school. This sets the tone for another uncompromisingly Scottish collection of American-derived folk-rock where domestic political issues and passing references to Hibernian FC sit side by side with tributes to Elvis Presley and the whine of the country guitar and sound as if they were the most natural pairing on earth.
Superbly produced by Pete Wingfield, the transition from earnest buskers to a discreet electric band format is entirely successful (musicians include such old hands at this game as Jerry Donahue and Dave Mattacks), though this is virtually the only acknowledgement that much of the '60s and '70s ever existed musically. It's the ferocious acoustic swing of the joyful, infectiously energetic numbers which is first to hit home, a singalong spirit which would go down a bomb on the football terraces.
However, it's the slower songs (including a reverent cover of Steve Earle's My Old Friend The Blues) that actually emerge the real winners, partly because they're better crafted and less prone to the lyrical gaucheness that creeps in when Craig and Charlie move from observing the general to chronicling the personal, where references to drunken scratching of cars with keys and to a smack in the face sit uncomfortably among the passionate declarations of love, thanking the Lord for his handiwork and despair at Scottish political passivity. Honest perhaps, but it does detract from some otherwise fine songwriting.
- Ian Cranna
(Issue #25)(October 1988)
The second album from Craig and Charlie Reid saw them expanding to band size and being, from time to time, somewhat louder. Apart from this, their concerns remained fairly similar, namely passion, love and Scotland. SUNSHINE ON LEITH happily contains the political melancholy of What Do You Do, the romance of Oh Jean and the exhortation of Come On Nature (which is powerful enough to make Nature come running sharpish at the twins' call) and still have space for the unlikely American sleeper hit that is I'm Gonna Be 500 Miles. A useful reminder of what a powerful thing The Proclaimers could be, and just in time for their absurdly unpunctual third LP.
- Jimmy Nicol
(Issue #91)(April 1994)