Interview with the band by The Scotsman, 22 March High priest of uncool Four years after they last made the Top 40 Del Amitri are back - but theyre hardly hip, and nor have they ever wanted to be, Justin Currie tells Aidan Smith Justin Currie is chuffed to bits. After almost 20 years of being forced to wear the hair shirt of pop naffness - and the hair pants as well - hes just glanced down a new list of uncool bands ... and Del Amitri arent on it. "Its an NME list, I think," he says. "Deacon Blue are still there and now Coldplay are on it. But theres no sign of us." Currie, though, isnt daft: he knows the Dels no longer being rated untrendy doesnt automatically translate as being miraculously hip. "All it means is weve been forgotten about, that people think its been next stop oblivion for us. And, you know, thats OK." Today Currie, 37, is running around his sunny but cluttered home trying to find the teapot. There are pictures of dead crooners on the walls but this one looks very much alive in his T-shirt, flared jeans and cowboy boots - even without his famous facial foliage (removed at record-company request). In the four years since the last of their 14 Top 40 hits, Del Amitri didnt quite make it to oblivion. Instead, Currie put down roots in Glasgows Charing Cross. "We always had this silly, pseudo-socialist policy that we wouldnt buy houses until we could afford to do it outright because we didnt believe in mortgages. Then we made a lot of money when a stupid song, Roll to Me, was bizzarely picked up by some radio stations in the US and became a big hit over there. Ian [Harvie, fellow band founder] freaked out about that because the song was so crummy, but I went and bought this place and justified it to myself because - ha, ha - I wasnt in hock to a dodgy bank that was ripping off the Third World. I know this isnt a politically correct thing to say but being able to buy it with cash gave me this great sense of power." So, Currie has been luxuriating in first-time home ownership and feeling all-powerful. He possibly mislaid the teapot on a few other occasions as well. The band started families, and they all went down the pub (a lot). Still, that doesnt account for four whole years of musical inactivity. Ah, but there was the unfortunate business of that Scotland World Cup football song, Dont Come Home Too Soon. It fanfared France 98, but as usual our boys were back before the postcards. "My biggest regret," mutters Currie. "We took a total slagging for it. The Tartan Army blamed us for Scotland not qualifying, saying the song wasnt jolly enough. So we decided it was time for a wee rethink " Curries muttonchops - apparently nurtured in a Fisons Gro-Bag - have gone. So too, he hopes, has "the inescapable feeling that Del Amitri had turned into one of those stolid, dependable groups like Squeeze - always around, but never doing anything particularly interesting". The new album is called Can You Do Me Good?. Rumours of their break-up, then, have been greatly exaggerated. There was a greatest hits collection, but they didnt want it released. It didnt sell well and they were pleased. It proved their record company were wrong: there werent any unwitting and untapped Del Amitri fans out there. "All of them had that shit already," says the upfront frontman. This is how Currie talks: their songs are "stupid" or "crummy" or "shit" and if a DJ picks up on them its "bizarre". He cheerfully admits they contain bits of other peoples songs. And he pleads guilty to writing too often about the rain, something of a Scottish pop obsession. "The word rain is the cheapest shortcut to sounding poetic. Whenever Hollywood scriptwriters are in trouble, they reach for that e e cummings line, not even the rain, has such small hands. Its lazy, and I admit it." If its not a contradiction in terms, whats the best Scottish rain song? "Maybe the Blue Niles Tinseltown in the Rain, though the Beatles Rain is the best ever." And the worst? "Sorry, but its got to be Raintown by Deacon Blue. Ricky Ross is a lovely guy, but Ive never got that Bruce Springsteenisation of Scotland thing - although thats pretty rum coming from me." Currie is pleased with the new album. "We got really blasi about releasing a record every 18 months. Now its like were starting over again, really exciting." He penned loads of songs during the bands extended holiday but - guess what? - he thought 50 per cent of them were "bog-standard, will-this-do? Del Amitri fare". So he dumped them. Now that the Scotland football team have got themselves a German coach, there would be a neat symmetry about the band hiring a leading exponent of Teutonic techno to oversee their comeback. They havent gone that radical, but they did mess about with different recording techniques, including computers, before hooking up with the hip-hop producer, Commissioner Gordon. Currie reckons the opening two songs, Just Before You Leave and Cash & Prizes sound "a bit loopy and groovy". The former is the first single; the latter seems to borrow from Joe Walshs Lifes Been Good in its litany of material excess. Or perhaps the line, "Ive got a hundred houses, some that Ive never seen", is just Currie the property tycoon in wishfulfilment mode. Then comes Drunk in a Band, a real list song. You point this out and he winces. "So it is. I hate list songs, Billy Joel killed them with We Didnt Start the Fire." But its a good one, you say - "Danny puts cones on the motorway, Donna dances tables in her lingerie" - its characters sound like real people. "They are. Theyre characters I knew when I was living in a rented flat in Partick. Great days." Out Falls the Past is about a man who "changes women like traffic switches lanes". Is it personal? "Not really. To sound horribly 1980s for a moment, Im a serial monogamist. But it becomes harder and harder for the opposite sex to trust you if they know your romantic history." Hes in a relationship at the moment. "If I ever try being a floozie, women run a mile." Apart from a few unusual bleeps and whooshes over the course of its 12 tracks, Can You Do Me Good? doesnt sound drastically different from other Del Amitri albums, and its hard to agree with Curries contention that it will probably "piss off" the old fans. Will it attract new ones? He claims not to care either way. "Weve never been cool," he says. "We grew out of a close-knit Glasgow scene, but were the pariahs of it. We desperately wanted to be on the Postcard label with all those groovy guys like Edwyn Collins but we werent trendy enough or good enough. And then when Melody Maker trumpeted us as the new Smiths, the talent scouts at Chrysalis were despatched to sign us - only to report back that wed already been on their books for six months. Thats pretty much how its gone for us." Currie might give you the impression he just bashes out his songs, but this is plainly rubbish - the lyrics are far too clever for that (and this album is a rain-free zone). "If some balloon at a record company thinks shaving off my sideboards will improve our image, Ill do it - this isnt high art. But if he wants me to write a Kylie Minogue song, he can f*** off. "Ive never been cool," he repeats, "and I never will be. Heres why: the other day I was at the airport. I was a bit bedraggled but everyone else was in a suit and I thought to myself: They know Im a rocknroll star. I felt great - while they were scurrying off to board meetings in Dusseldorf, I was wearing shades. Then I walked through the wrong exit and banged my head against a locked door. Ill never be cool because Ill always blow it." Can You Do Me Good? is released on 8 April by Mercury/A&M. Del Amitri play the Barrowland, Glasgow on 9 May.