Categories
GUEST EDITOR

From The Desk Of Del Amitri’s Justin Currie: Roberto Bolaño’s “2666”

CurrieLog01002b83There will always be a small bunch who will never forgive Justin Currie for the sins of his former band, Del Amitri. Namely, the speed and vigor with which the group abandoned the angular new-wave-ish promise of its 1985 self-titled debut for more conventional pop inroads. Currie makes no apologies for the 17 years and five albums of smart, well-executed, comparatively middle-of-the-road Brit Invasion melodies and country-rock yearnings that followed. It even netted him and his Scottish bandmates an American hit, “Roll To Me,” in 1995. Nowadays, Currie is still living in Glasgow while nurturing an intermittent solo career that now includes The Great War (Ryko). Coming eight years after Del Amitri’s last album, it resurrects the reassuring jangle of that band as it continues Currie’s middle-age explorations of the darker recesses of the male love muscle (i.e. the heart). Currie will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our Q&A with him.

Roberto-Bolano2

Currie: The whole world is in this enormous, awesome novel. It is rich in highly original imagery and simile. Multifarious narratives constantly branch off from the main river of the book, but they all serve to reiterate the recurring tragedy. Humankind is cruel, violent and frivolous. Men are bestial, money is corrosive, war is absurd, and worst of all for Roberto Bolaño the poet, literature is impotent. In the sense that 2666 frequently appears to touch on something very close to an encapsulation of human existence, you can compare it very favourably with Alistair Gray’s Lanark and David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest. Man is the pie that bakes and eats himself. Endless shipwreck.

Video after the jump.