Amazon.co.uk Review
Whatever Craig and Charlie Reid were doing in the six years between
Persevere and its predecessor,
Hit The Highway, it wasn't developing a radical new sound. From the first bars of the characteristically raucous opening track, "There's A Touch",
Persevere is instantly recognisable as a Proclaimers album: Charlie Reid's insistent acoustic rhythm guitar, a sparkling lead guitar bringing out the melody and, most of all, the Reids' utterly unmistakable voices. Even if they'd come back after an absence of decades, it is unlikely that anything remotely like them would have appeared in the interim--which is obviously to The Proclaimers' credit. The twins show no sign of losing their rare knack for the memorable melody and the pugnacious lyric and the best moments of
Persevere combine both: the exuberant demolition of New Labour values on "Land Fit For Zeroes", the jeering debunking of our celebrity-driven culture of self-pity on "Everybody's A Victim" and the eloquent reconciling of their fierce Scottish patriotism and internationalist politics on "Scotland's Story". Defiantly unfashionable, immensely contrary and altogether unique, The Proclaimers' return is as welcome as it is overdue.
--Andrew Mueller