Scottish band Del Amitri’s career can be best described as the consolidation of the success of their 1989 break-through single ‘Nothing Ever Happens’. Each successive album opened up their music to a moderately wider audience, culminating in an impressive US Top 10 chart position for single ‘Roll To Me’, achieved seemingly without effort in 1995, a time when British Bands found it notoriously hard to gain a foothold in that territory.

Then, in 1997 they released the album ‘Some Other Sucker’s Parade’ and… killed off their career.

However, Some Other Sucker’s Parade’ (SOSP hereafter) is Del Amitri’s finest album to date and the only truly great album they ever made.

Their previous long players, while undeniably accomplished, were generally rather immature and uneven affairs, especially compared to SOSP. They contained admittedly many highlights, but seemed strained, even contrived as a whole, as if the matter had been given just too much thought.

This strain can be attributed to self-consciousness, specifically: a constant awareness of their own extreme idiosyncrasy: they never managed to lose sight of the fact that they were attempting to do something extraordinary. I mean, seriously: how did a Scottish country rock band manage to score even one hit in the Nineties anyway, let alone a whole handful?

The continued success of Radiohead in particular (their polar opposites as regards aesthetic standards) must have been a constant source of worry for them. How did Radiohead, as well as Oasis and Blur, manage to have more successful careers with songs not half as good, they must have asked themselves. What are we overlooking? – Rather than blocking out their surroundings and creating music honestly, Del Amitri seemed sometimes too concerned with ensuring the wool remain pulled over the press and public’s eyes. Can you blame them?

The success of ‘Roll To Me’ must have come as a great relief. One would imagine they set to work on their next album with renewed confidence in the validity of their endeavour. And perhaps they really did. The ensuing work can be interpreted as a point for point refutation of the Radiohead ethos, rather than the work of a good band, capable of writing good songs, trying desperately to poach fans from more successful contemporaries.

Indeed, while they show themselves masters of everything at which Radiohead are hopelessly inept (writing, arranging and performing songs,) they demonstratively show disdain for everything at which Radiohead excel. What to make of that cover, for starters: Justin and Iain (founder members) look like a pair of homeless drunks. Iain in particular pushes hobo chic onto a whole new level. (As the Beach Boys also discovered to their mortification when they had themselves photographed feeding goats on the cover of ‘Pet Sounds’, the public does not habitually recognise masterpieces by their lack of glamour.) Besides this, the album sounds as if it was recorded live using only one microphone. It always makes me laugh to see a mixing engineer in the credit list. What did he do: push up the fader?

On SOSP, Del Amitri were finally playing to their strengths. They had reached the stage where they could comfortably write and perform 14 songs of similar scope and magnitude. And while there is nothing on SOSP so sublime as ‘Roll To Me’ (surely: the last ever great pop song), there is among the 14 songs not a single dud.

Justin inhabits throughout a role with which he is comfortable. He was, during their successful period, certainly the photogenic type, but had no real taste for cultivating his personality into marketable proportions, preferring instead to act onstage and in videos like an awkward goofball, charming, but ultimately too aloof for the masses. The unnerving sense, marring previous albums, that he is forcing himself to keep one eye on the kids and making the odd token concession is absent from SOSP, the lyrics expressing at all times only a mature and melancholy Romantic resignation.

Iain Harvie makes no further attempts to be a cutting edge guitar hero (something which he had tried with varying degrees of success on the previous album ‘Twisted’,) and instead remains stunningly tasteful and appropriate for the duration. The whole thing just sounds…well: relaxed.

Perhaps they were just too tired to continue competing with the likes of Radiohead, and decided simply to make a good record, without regard for fashion or trend. If the success of ‘Roll To Me’ is anything to go by, they must have reasoned, we might get lucky. They had not taken into account the measureless spite and bile that publications such as the execrable NME can muster for rock bands that achieve success without their sanction and for anything that can all too easily be recognised as a Radiohead anti-dote. When Del Amitri performed the first single from SOSP, ‘Not Where It’s At’, on TOTP, their performance involved jumping around and laughing.

Perhaps SOSP was from the start conceived as a suicide attempt. Perhaps the very title ‘Some Other Sucker’s Parade’ represented an admission of defeat, calling time on a career that had largely run its course anyway, and abandoning the field to some other sucker, but leaving future Radiohead clones with one last untouchable blueprint for excellence, a magnificent last hurrah for a dying tendency. For make no mistake: when ‘Some Other Sucker’s Parade’ flopped, what essentially failed to connect with an audience was - Britain's last great songwriter.

I don’t have my finger on
The pulse of my generation
I just got my hand on my heart
Know no better location

From: ‘Not Where It’s At’, lyrics by Justin Currie.